


Phoenix Rising

by burkygirl



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, In Panem AU, Post-Mockingjay, Pre-Epilogue Mockingjay, growing back together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-03 13:52:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 48,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5293559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burkygirl/pseuds/burkygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss and Peeta are growing back together in District 12 when they realize that even though the Hunger Games and the war are over, Panem's fragile peace still requires their protection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The fire snaps and crackles on the kitchen hearth. From my perch in my mother’s rocking chair, I watch the flames leap and struggle for supremacy.

The rockers rumble softly against the wood floor. I’ve been sitting here since I came back, rocking my days and nights away, wrapped in my mother’s shawl. It still smells faintly of her lavender soap and reminds me of simpler times when my mother’s arms were the only source of comfort I needed. Those times are long past.

I was once the girl on fire. Like all children who play with fire, I eventually got burned. They’ve buried me here in the ashes of District 12.

Haymitch has not been back to see me since he left me in the courtyard between our homes in the Victor's Village with a letter from my mother when we got off the hovercraft. I didn't bother to read the letter. It's sitting in a pile on the mantel with all the rest of the mail that's been coming in. Greasy Sae brings it to me every morning when she comes to make me breakfast. She's almost as alone here as me. She and her granddaughter Lily are the only people in her family who survived the bombing of District 12. They came back with about a dozen others who are living in the other homes in the Victor's Village while they work to rebuild. Lily and I pretty much live in her own world and Sae takes care of us both, though Lily is more co-operative.

I'm in the same clothes I left the Capitol in. My hair, burned off in places by the fire that billowed through the Capitol after Coin dropped Gale and Beetee's bomb, is growing longer and hangs in matted lanks around my face.

For whatever reason, the fire and my mother's chair feel safe to me, like the closets in the presidential mansion or the ventilation shafts of District 13. The rest of the house looms dark, cold and empty, with ghosts and memories of Prim lurking around every corner. I live in a cave, but without Peeta there’s no one to keep the monsters at bay. When thoughts of him surface, I push them away. Like my parents, like Prim, like Gale, he is gone.

Sae keeps suggesting I get out of the house and try hunting again. "The fresh air will do you good, Girlie," she tells me today as she leaves to take Lily to school. When the door begins to close, I hear her call out, "Your bow is down the hall." I decide to pull myself out of my mother's chair and find Mockingjay bow on the desk in the study, where I had my meeting with President Snow, along with my father's hunting jacket and a box.

I have to approach the desk to get the bow. I can still see Snow sitting there smugly, letting me know that the Capitol owns me, telling me that Peeta and I have somehow sowed the seeds of a revolution and it is up to us to put the fire out. Or I will lose everything. I guess he was right about that. The memory of the sickly sweet stench of the rose in his lapel drives me from the room. I grab the box and my father's jacket and flee to the living room.

I wrap myself in my father's jacket and start to sort through the box I found in the study. It holds the items I smuggled into District 13 after I made them bring me back here so that I could see the damage caused by Snow's bombs. I find our plant book, my parents' wedding photo, the spile Haymitch sent in and the locket Peeta gave me in the arena. The pearl he gave me is gone. I know I had it with me when we stormed the Capitol. I suspect it was thrown out with what was left of the Mockingjay uniform that Cinna made me when they cut me out of it in the hospital after the fire. Still wearing my father's jacket, I curl up on the couch.

I am in a grave and the people I've killed are all lined up to throw dirt over me. The line snakes through the Victor's Village and into the town. I see their faces as they peer down into the hole at me, shovel in hand. The Careers. Rue. Finnick. Mags. Messalla. Boggs. Cinna. Madge. Faces from the Hob. My classmates and teachers. Our neighbours in the Seam. Prim. "It's your fault," each one says. The weight of each shovelful of soil feels like I am being punched. I awake on the couch with a scream, trying to claw my way out of the grave. I can't breathe. My chest is heaving.

The shovel continues to scrape, grating against what's left of my sanity. It goes on and on, dragging me off the sofa and down the hall where it gets louder. It's outside and so I burst out the front door, half mad with anxiety and fear, ready to take on the ghosts with my bare hands.

I pull up short. His face is flushed from digging up the ground under my windows. In a wheelbarrow are five scraggly bushes. "You're back."

"Dr. Aurelius wouldn't let me come back until yesterday," Peeta says. "By the way, he says he can't keep pretending to be treating you forever. You have to pick up the phone."

I don't answer. I am still trying to process that Peeta has returned, and he looks more like my Peeta than I have seen since they lifted me out of the arena after the Quarter Quell. His is thinner and covered in burn scars like me. He has dark circles under his eyes, but the ice he has been carrying in his blue eyes has thawed. He seems sad, but no longer as tortured and confused.

He looks at me and frowns with concern.

"I went into the woods this morning and dug these up. For her," he says. "I thought we could plant them along the side of the house." I look down and the bushes and see that they are evening primrose. How like Peeta to think of a perfect tribute to her. I nod and rush back into the house.

I run upstairs for the first time since I've been home. I burst into my room and am once again struck by the scent of roses. I search my room frantically. This time the smell is real. Snow has been dead for months, but the calling card he left me after the bombing remains. Among the dried flowers in a vase near my bed, sits a perfect white rose. Its perfume still lingers in the air.

I gag and grab the vase rushing down the stairs to the kitchen. I hurl the vase into the fireplace where it crashes against the brick, the dried flowers falling into the flames. They combust and orange tongues lick at the rose. Suddenly, a burst of blue flame flares up and envelopes it.

Message received and answered.

When I get back upstairs I throw the windows of my room open to the fresh air, frantic to rid myself of the odor of roses. Even with the windows open, I can still smell them and so I strip off my clothes. I kick them into a corner and walk into my adjoining bathroom. I look at myself in the mirror for the first time since my return, examining my face carefully. My complexion is sallow and dark rings hang below my eyes. The new skin they gave me in the Capitol is still pink and raw. I am struck again by the idea that I look like one of the quilts my mother used to make out of old clothes when they could no longer be mended.

I am a patchwork of skin. My mind is loosely sewn together. My emotions wrap so tightly around me, that I feel as though I may suffocate. I have lost everyone. Prim is dead. My mother has all but abandoned me - again. Sae says Gale has a big military job in District 2. The Peeta who loved me is gone, replaced by a tortured soul who suffered at Snow's hands because of me.

Peeta.

He looked healthy. How is that possible? He has lost everything. His family. His memories. How does he get through the day? How does he manage to go on with his life? Prim is dead and every day is an effort for me just remember to breathe in and out. He must think I am broken beyond repair. Yesterday, I would have said that was true. Today, I managed to get out of my chair and I'm not so sure.

I step into the shower and scrub the stench of roses and the filth brought on by weeks of sitting from my body and out of my hair. When I step onto the mat, my skin is pink and slightly tender. I try to attack my hair with a brush, but I can't pull it through the tangles.

I am dressed in my favourite pants and shirt and feeding my old clothes to the fire when Sae lets herself in to make lunch. She watches me. "The boy is back," she says.

I squat by the fire and watch the clothes burst into flame.

Sae suggests I pare my nails off with a knife. I nod and get one from a drawer. I sit by the fire and start to trim them. She comes closer and looks at my hair. I hear a 'tsk' of reproach about its state, but she doesn't express whatever she was thinking.

"I tried to brush it, but it was impossible. I think I'll have to shave it off." The idea stings more than I'd like to admit. My hair is my only concession to being female; my one vanity.

Sae seems to understand. "I don't think you'll need to do that. It's still singed on the ends and uneven in places. I'll cut it if you want," she offers. "It won't take long. I used to cut my daughters' hair all the time. It'll be healthier and grow faster if you do."

My mother used to trim my hair with the scissors from her sewing basket. I tell Sae where to find them and she sets to work, saying very little.

I feel the hair fall away from me to the floor. Sae nods with satisfaction when she is done and then sweeps it all into the garbage. I go into the bathroom and look at myself. The Mockingjay braid is gone. I am left with a short bob, but it is clean and healthier than it has since my prep team cared for it in the Capitol. My head feels like it is floating above my shoulders. I look different. I feel new.

When I come back to the kitchen, Sae is sliding two eggs from a pan onto a plate. She places it in front of me. She waits to see what I will do next. When I pick up my fork, she nods with satisfaction and turns to wash the dishes. "I think I'll go hunting today," I say.

I see her hands go still in the water, but she doesn't turn around. "I could use some fresh meat for supper."

"Invite Peeta and Haymitch too. It's probably been a while since they had fresh game."

I grab my father's hunting jacket. I find my old game bag in a closet by the kitchen door and head out to my woods.

* * *

 

It rained early this morning and the air is cool and clean. I draw it deeply into my lungs and breathe out, imagining any last hint of the roses in my body floating away on the morning breeze. Snow cannot touch me in my woods where I belong.

I walk along on silent feet, following the trails I made with my father as a girl. I feel his reassuring presence here, where he taught me about hunting and nature, skills that would save our lives after his death.

I stop at the hollow log and pull out my bow, checking the string to make sure it’s still taut after almost a year of disuse. I love this basic bow, carved by my father’s hands. When we were starving after the mine collapse, using his bow made me feel as though he were still providing for us. It comforted me in a way that nothing else could.

I hear songbirds in the trees today. They have come back to the district after a long winter away. Squirrels leap from tree to tree, scolding me loudly. I wonder if they recognize me and the corners of my mouth twitch up slightly. No squirrel stew today, I think. Today, I am looking for rabbit.

I see one in the distance, sunning itself in a little clearing, munching on fresh green shoots. The white hair has almost left its pelt now, replaced by his fine brown summer coat. I shoot it in the neck and quickly put it into my game bag.

I notice one of Gale’s old snares not far away and I wonder whether he had set his trap line the day before the bombing.

Sure enough, there is a rabbit in the snare, long dead. Only the bones are left. The rest has been carried away by scavengers. I suck in air through my teeth, disapproving of the waste. I clean the snare, but I don’t reset it. The Capitol sends me a healthy salary every month, a pension of sorts for being a victor and then the Mockingjay. I have no need to sell game to the townspeople.

I decide to walk the rest of the trap line. If Gale set this one, then he undoubtedly set the rest. He’d had his family to feed and he’d always been more successful with his snares than with a bow. He had an uncanny ability to think like our prey and calculate how they would succumb to his plan. Even as a child he believed the end justified the means.

If he had ever been prey, he would think differently.

I remember sitting in the window of the rebel’s command centre in District 2, the day I finally understood of what Gale was capable and the depth of his anger toward the Capitol. I wonder how he can possibly live in District 2 after the damage he did there. Sometimes at night I am forced to watch the waves of stone roll down that mountain, burying the people inside, leaving them to stumble in the dark, searching madly for a way out, failing. Then I am inside with my father. The sirens are blaring and people are screaming. He looks at me, his face covered in coal dust like it used to be when he came home from the mine. “We’re all dead. You should have stopped this. It’s all your fault.”

I follow the familiar path through the woods. I shoot another rabbit and clean the snares, but do not reset them. I am through with traps. If I am going to take a life to feed myself, I will do it without trickery. The trap line ends near the lake. Its tranquility forces the dark thoughts from my mind. It is as pristine and beautiful as the day Gale and I brought Cressida and the camera crew here. The blue sky is reflecting in the water and the mountains rise around it.

I wander along the shore toward the ruined house. I find a perfect skipping stone, flat and round, and with a quick flick of my wrist, I watch it hop across the mirror-like surface, creating ripples with each leap. As the small waves spread across the water I think back again to the day when Snow visited my home; the day he told me that a few berries had sparked a revolution.

I daydream about what would have happened if we had just run away like I planned just before the Quell. I know we would have come here, to this house by the lake outside the fence where it has stood for centuries, since long before the creation of Panem and the forming of the districts.

We could have fixed up the house. Gathered what we needed to eat from the forest. Swam in the lake. Learned to fish. Sat for long hours by the fire, snug and safe in each other’s arms. He would still be the boy I remember, and not the sad-eyed man I saw this morning.


	2. Chapter 2

I field dress and skin the rabbits before I bring them home to Sae. She smiles approvingly at me and sets to work on dinner.

“I’ll make rabbit stew. I found some cabbage, carrots and potatoes in town,” she says, as she expertly butchers the rabbit meat into cubes for the stew. She tells me that she saw both Peeta and Haymitch. Peeta will be joining us.

“The boy is too thin. A home-cooked meal will do him good, but Haymitch was so drunk that I’m not even sure he heard me,” Sae says. “That man is going to drink himself to death.”

I return to my chair by the fire, which causes Sae’s eyebrows to furrow, but she doesn’t comment. I watch her brown the rabbit slightly. She peels and chops the vegetables.

My mind wanders to Haymitch, 25 yards away in his fetid pit of a house. I hope he made his way to bed before he passed out, or at least to the couch. I can’t count the number of times Peeta or I have found him with his forehead on the kitchen table or passed out in a pool of his own sick. I suppose he’s entitled. The Hunger Games nearly turned me into a morphling. Honestly, being an alcoholic seems like a step up.

The Capitol killed his family and his girl. Then, he was forced to try to save 24 years’ worth of woefully under-educated and ill-prepared tributes. I try to imagine what it would have been like to escort children to their deaths, year after year; to scrape for sponsors and scheme to keep them alive in the arena. To consistently fail.

If there hadn’t been a war, I’d be living as Snow’s slave, still collecting a list of people whose death was my fault. Prim might still be dead, and the chances are that my mother, Gale and Peeta would all be dead too.

Sae is turning down the stew to simmer on low when Peeta knocks on the door. I open it. He’s holding a loaf of bread, clearly not sure of whether he should come in or not. His eyes go wide when he takes in my appearance. I wonder if he’s having a flashback. I contemplate slamming the door, but Haymitch’s scolding voice runs through my head.

_If you’d been taken by the Capital, and hijacked, and then tried to kill Peeta, is this the way he would be treating you?_

I step aside and invite him in. Sae thanks him sincerely for the bread.

“Your family’s bakery made the best bread I’ve ever had,” she says. The delicious yeasty sent of fresh bread is filling the room as she eagerly cuts it into thick slices.

Peeta is still looking at me strangely.

“What?”

“You cut your hair. Your braid is gone.”

“I needed a change. I was tired of taking care of it,” I say, which is at least partly true.

After about 20 minutes, it appears Sae was right and that Haymitch was too drunk to retain anything she said this morning. I march over to his house and barge in the front door. I ignore the filth and the stench and go straight into his kitchen. Then I head for the living room where Haymitch is passed out on the couch. Liquor bottles are scattered on the floor. I lift the bowl of water that I filled in his kitchen and pour it over his head.

Haymitch roars and stands straight up. The knife that he sleeps with is clutched in his fist. After a few seconds of panic, he turns his eyes on me.

“Oh, it’s you sweetheart,” he slurs. “I shoulda known.”

“Get up. It’s time to sop up some of the alcohol in your stomach.”

“Well, well. So you decided to get up out of that chair, did you? Imagine that. Lover boy’s not back even 24 hours and you’re all cleaned up. Got a haircut too. “

“Shut-up, Haymitch.” I tell him to get cleaned up and join Peeta, Sae and I for dinner.

“No. I don’t think so, Sweetheart.” He lifts a couch cushion and finds his half-empty bottle. “I think I’ll stay right here.” He salutes me with the bottle. “There’s a pork chop in every glass.”

I see red for a minute, grab the bottle from Haymitch and hurl it toward the wall. I hear it smash, but pay no attention because I have Haymitch in my crosshairs.

“He’s better than both of us, Haymitch. We made a promise to save him and we failed him.” I gesture between us. “You and me. If I have to live with it, so do you.” I storm out without waiting for a reply.

Sae is just putting the bowls of stew on the table when Haymitch shows up in a clean shirt. He throws himself into a chair and glowers at me, but he speaks to Peeta.

“Hi Peeta,” he says. “The bread looks good.”

It’s an awkward meal. Of three of us, Peeta has always been the one who could make small talk. He was the charming one, the one who could keep Caesar Flickerman laughing, the one who made all of Panem, and especially the citizens of the Capitol see me through his eyes. The new Peeta says nothing, but keeps throwing puzzled glances my way.

Fortunately, Sae and her granddaughter are not exactly conversationalists. She seems satisfied to see us finally putting food in our bellies.

“Well, Sae, it wasn’t wild dog, but that was a damn fine meal,”Haymitch says as he sits back from the table. He rubs his belly and looks at me, expectantly. Where does he get off, criticizing my manners?

“Thanks Sae. And thanks Peeta for the bread,” I say. It’s the first I’ve spoken since I left Haymitch’s house. Sae puts on the kettle for tea and then washes up. She and Haymitch get ready to leave.

“I’ll be home if anyone needs me,” Haymitch says with another meaningful glance at me, and then staggers out to find another bottle with Sae and her granddaughter in his wake.

We are alone and Peeta is still watching me. He clears his throat. “I’m glad you got outside today. You seem to be feeling better.”

I don’t say anything. I just get up from the table and walk Peeta to the door.

I force myself to speak. “Thank you. Again. For the bread. And the primroses. She would love them.” I fell my voice begin to break and stop talking.

Peeta gives me a soft smile. He seems to understand that he’s made a difference today, but he says nothing and makes no move to open the door.

“Breakfast tomorrow?” I ask.

“Thanks. I’d like that.” Then he goes home.

I take my seat by the fire again and watch the flames flicker. I look up at the calendar. May 7th. I’ll be 18 in the morning. Birthdays in the Seam were usually a non-event. I see no reason to change that.

I feel fatigue steal over me, the kind that comes from a day well-spent in the fresh air. It feels healthy, normal, and so I bank the fire and go to bed for the first time in months.

The sheets feel cool and clean against my skin, but now that I’m in bed, my usual anxiety about falling asleep begins. I prop myself up against the pillows and notice the lights are still on at Peeta’s house. I am still thinking of him when I fall asleep.

I am standing on a pile of Snow’s white roses; their sickeningly sweet perfume is filling my nostrils, permeating my clothes and hair. I am lashed to a post with my hands behind my back. Prim is bound to a stake at my left. Peeta is tied up at my right.

A torch is dropped on the roses and I feel the heat at my feet. Prim begins to scream as the roses combust into blue flame. Peeta’s head arches back in pain. Prim begs to me to help her. The ropes are cutting into my skin as I desperately try to free my hands and release us all. Peeta looks at me. His pupils are almost entirely black. He screams. “You’re a mutt! A fire mutt! I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

“Not real, Peeta! Not real,” I plead. Suddenly Snow’s face hovers before my own. “Come now, Miss Everdeen, I thought we weren’t going to lie to each other.”

When I awake, I am sitting straight up in bed, the knife that I slid under my pillow before going to sleep is held tightly in my fist, aligned with my ear, ready to strike Snow through the heart. I am still screaming. I feel my heart beating in my chest and in my throat. I am gasping for air, sweating from the exertion.

I throw myself back against the pillows. I am never going to be free of the nightmares. It doesn’t matter how much time passes or how many walks in the woods I take. My nights will always be filled with horrors. The only time I have ever felt safe at night was on the train with Peeta. Night after night he kept the monsters and mutts at bay, soothing me, loving me.

_Stay with me. Always._

I wonder if he remembers. The Capitol would not have had that memory to twist into something awful.

I get out of bed and lean against window frame. The cool of the glass against my face is soothing. The lights are still on at Peeta’s house and I am tempted to run across the courtyard and bang on his door. Instead, I notice that the darkness is fading on horizon as the sun begins to rise. I watch its assent to its rightful place in the sky, until it is bathing Peeta’s house in the orange glow that he loves. I wonder if he is painting, his face a picture of concentration as he busies himself with his pots and brushes.

He’s probably awake. Peeta has always been an early riser. Before the Games it was his responsibility to leave the family’s apartment over the bakery before dawn and go downstairs to start the bread so that fresh loaves would be on the racks, ready for sale when the shop opened. He would spend all day at school before reporting back to the bakery to frost cakes.

I decide that since the day is starting, I might as well spend my birthday doing what I love. I get dressed and go downstairs, slipping on my father’s jacket and grabbing his bow. On my way down the hall, I close the door to the study where the Mockingjay bow still sits on the desk.

I step out the kitchen door and walk towards the woods through the backyard where the dandelions are just are beginning to open.

* * *

 

I am back from hunting in time for breakfast. I leave my game bag at the back door and head inside.

Peeta is at my kitchen table, chatting with Sae who is at the island counter, fixing his tea. They seem surprised to see me. Sae remarks that she thought I was still asleep upstairs. I say nothing. I just pour myself a cup of tea and scoop some hot porridge from the pot into a bowl.

I sit down at the table and curl up on the chair. One foot is resting on the seat of the chair. The other leg is underneath me. I reach around my bent knee and pick up my mug to sip my tea.

Peeta is watching me. The circles under his eyes are darker than they were yesterday. He seems to be having more trouble focusing this morning. I have a feeling he got even less sleep than I did last night, which means none. Sae leaves to get her granddaughter ready for school, but not before reminding us that she’s right next door if we need anything. The door closes and we are alone again.

“You were up early this morning,” he comments. I wonder if I look as tired as he does.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I mutter. “I thought the fresh air would clear my head.”

Peeta’s eyes, so dark and troubled this morning, soften somewhat with understanding, the way they did last night. Neither of us say anything for a minute. I reach for the sugar and stir it into my porridge.

“You had nightmares a lot before the war. Real or not real?” he asks.

“Real,” I say. “We both did.”

“I still do,” he says softly, looking down while he stirs his porridge.

I don’t know what to say to that. The old Peeta and I would have talked about the horrors we see when we can no longer hold our eyes open and then reassured each other. Protected each other. I don’t ask if he remembers our nights on the train, even though I think he wants me to. I don’t ask what he dreamed, even though I suspect he wants to share. Because he’s Peeta, he will be honest, and I’m not ready to know if I’m one of the mutts who chase him through his dreams at night. I wish I’d had two arrows in my quiver the day of the execution; one for Coin, and one for Snow. They did this to us.

I did this to us.

We eat in silence for a few minutes. Peeta’s tea, clouded with milk, is growing cold by his bowl. I seize the cup and pour the tea down the kitchen sink, then get a fresh mug from the cupboard.

“I noticed your light was on early this morning,” I mention with my back to him. I pour him a new cup of tea and bring it back to the table.

Peeta is trying to decide what to tell me, what I might be ready to hear.

“I always leave a light on now at night,” he admits. “But I was awake this morning. I was making bread.” He gestures toward the fresh loaf on the table. “It clears my head,” he says with an ironic twist to his lips, throwing my own words back at me.

I smirk. I’ve missed his sarcasm. “Try your tea,” I urge him. “Sometimes the caffeine helps.”

Peeta makes a face. “I don’t like tea?” He seems to genuinely not remember how he prefers it.

“Trust me,” I say. Peeta’s eyes widen. I see fear and recognition at war in his face. Decision made, he sips the tea with his eyes closed. They fly open, free of demons for the first time this morning.

“I remember! I prefer my tea without – “

“Milk or sugar,” I finish. It’s a bittersweet victory. I am grieved that even this has been taken from him, but pleased to have brought him a little peace this morning. For a moment, my Peeta is back. My boy with the bread. The hard lump in my chest, the one I’ve been carrying since the rebels brought him back to me, softens just a little.

He covers my hand with his own. I up look into the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen, the ones that belong to my truest friend. They are sparkling. The old Peeta is still in there, I realize, fighting to get out.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

I turn my hand over so that our hands are touching, palm to palm. I can feel my heart pounding in my ears as his strong fingers grasp my palm.

I close my eyes for a second as I squeeze back and savour the moment. I realize this is the first time I’ve been happy since they took him from me. Tears of joy are trying to rise to the surface, but I push them down because I’m afraid they will confuse Peeta. I decide change the subject, but I don’t let go of his hand.

“I shot two squirrels this morning. It’s too much meat for just one person. Come for supper?”

He smiles at me. “I’ll bring dessert.”

I grin back at him. “I was counting on it.”


	3. Chapter 3

Days pass and I start to develop a routine. Visions of mutts and fire chase me from my slumber until I finally give up around sunrise and start my day.

No matter what time I wake, Peeta’s lights are always on. His house is like a beacon in the dark, signaling safety. Some nights I sit straight up in bed, my knife poised to stab the mutt that’s trying to kill me. Other nights I wake up in tears, drowning in grief for whomever I watched die in my sleep. Those are the times I ache for the safety his arms and crawl into my closet instead, waiting for day to begin.

Peeta bakes and brings fresh bread for breakfast. We eat whatever meat I managed to bring home in the morning for dinner with Haymitch, Sae and her granddaughter. Peeta brings treats for dessert. We are both physically stronger, but are still carefully avoiding much discussion of the past.

One evening in early June, Haymitch announces that he’s ordered goslings from District 10. He’s decided to build a pen in his backyard and raise them there. The rest of us are stunned into silence. Haymitch can barely take care of himself. I catch Peeta’s eye and we snigger. Sae’s purses her lips together tightly, her shoulders moving up and down.

Haymitch looks around at us, annoyed.

“What?” he barks, causing us all to lose control at the same moment. I drop my fork and howl with laughter, until the tears are flowing down my cheeks. Peeta has pushed back his chair from the table and is sitting elbows-to-knees, his entire body convulsing in a fit of giggles. Sae is chortling and pounding on the table at the same time.

“I just figured it would give me something to do,” Haymitch grumbles, and we laugh even harder.

Peeta pulls himself together, wiping the tears off of his face with the heel of his hand. He manages to gasp out, “Fresh eggs would be good, Haymitch. I’ll help you put up the fence,” before dissolving into fits of laughter again.

Sae and I are holding on to each other now. We’ve lost complete control of ourselves. Haymitch rolls his eyes and says he’ll see us in the morning. The front door closes.

Sae and I are still gasping for air when Peeta looks at us with an impish grin. “Those poor geese.”

We roar with laughter again. I slide off my chair and onto the floor, my arms wrapped around my middle. My ribs ache, but I can’t stop.

* * *

A few days later, the phone rings and I answer it for the first time.

“Good day, Katniss.” It’s Dr. Aurelius. “I’m glad to hear your voice. I don’t think we’ve spoken since you left the Capitol.”

In reality, Dr. Aurelius and I didn’t speak much while I was in the Capitol. Mostly, he sought me out of whatever closet I’d been hiding in that particular day. I would refuse to speak and he would take a nap. Personally, I see no need to change the relationship, but Dr. Aurelius has other plans.

“I’m very pleased you took my message to Peeta to heart and answered the phone today, Katniss. Treatment is a very important condition of your restriction to District 12.”

I hadn’t thought about the possibility that they’d send me back to the Capitol if I didn’t answer. Until a few weeks ago, it had hurt to think at all. I don’t tell that to the head doctor. “I just felt like picking up the phone.”

“Ah yes, Peeta has been telling me that you were up and about, getting some fresh air, and hunting. I was very satisfied to hear that. That’s an excellent sign of recovery. He said you’ve been eating meals together as well. Regular meals, exercise and routine are very important for someone who suffers from your condition. Now, I trust you are taking your medications?”

I don’t answer the question about the pills he prescribed for me. Every time I look at them I think of the morphling drip in District 13 and the pills that were prescribed for me in the Capitol. I will not allow myself to become dependent again.

“Peeta has been talking to you about me?” My voice sounds more frustrated than I expected. He has no right to share anything about me with the Capitol.

“Now, don’t be angry, Katniss. Peeta has to call me every day as a condition of his release. He tells me all about his day and you have been figuring prominently in the discussion of late. I confess that I’ve been pumping him for information a bit so that I can fill the holes in your chart.” He pauses. I wonder if he’s looking for an apology or an admission of guilt from me. Not going to happen.

“At any rate, he sounds happier than he’s been since I first started to treat him. He has no one else left to fill the gaps in his mind. There are pieces of his memory only you can unlock, which is why I finally agreed to his request to return to District 12. He’ll never fully recover, but the more you tell him, the better his recovery will be. He needs you, Katniss.”

I don’t say anything to that and so he goes on to compliment the brilliance of Prim’s plan to hijack Peeta back. “Katniss, your sister must have fought an uphill battle in District 13 to get more experienced healers to listen to her. My colleague there said they’d never seen a young medical student so determined to be heard.”

He tells me that Prim had to present and defend her theory to the District 13 medical board before it was accepted. With no better options on the table, they put her plan into effect and were shocked to see that it worked. I imagine my baby sister standing before a room of experienced doctors describing her plan and the logic and science behind it. For the first time in a long time, I feel something other grief at the mention of her name. I am proud of her determination. Prim and I had never directly discussed her plan or what she went through to get it approved as treatment for Peeta. I was too absorbed in my own battles in District 2 to think much about what she was doing. I had only just begun to comprehend how mature she’d become and how much she’d been through when I lost her.

Of course, Dr. Aurelius has no idea that I am hearing all of this for the first time and he continues to prattle on. “The after affect is that his body has conditioned itself to release positive endorphins when he hears the truth. He’s become quite adept at recognizing it when it’s spoken to him. Positive memories bring him peace. Traumatic memories bring on flashbacks, but he’s getting better and better at managing those.” He pauses again, but I still say nothing. “Ordinarily, Katniss, I wouldn’t share all this information about a patient, but I truly believe that Peeta’s ability to recover depends on you and it’s important for you to understand his state of mind.”

His state of mind? Suddenly, I am back in that hospital room in District 13, filled with hope and love, walking past Gale on my way to Peeta, so eager to hold him again and being met with madness and fingers closing around my throat.

“He hated me. He tried to kill me.”

“Katniss, I truly don’t believe that he’s a danger to you anymore. When he attacked you, his system was flooded with tracker jacker venom. He’d been totally brainwashed. The venom is all but out of his system now. He knows when an attack is coming on. But you’ll need to be patient with him. He’s plagued with nightmares at night, and still suffers from occasional flashbacks when he is awake.”

Dr. Aurelius again brings up the suggestion that I take the pills he prescribed. I hang up the phone on him.

It’s not cold in the house, but I make a fire on the kitchen hearth and settle into my chair anyway. It comforts me while I think about all the times Peeta and I were together, how much he loved me. He was my one constant through all of the anxiety that came with the Games. Even if Peeta can never love me again, he deserves to escape from the prison that Snow has created in his mind. I need to find a pleasant, non-threatening memory, something that will give him back a piece of who he was without causing a flashback.

I wander into the living room, where the plant book still sits on the coffee table and an idea comes fully formed into my mind. I just need to figure out how to put it into action.

* * *

Dinner is a quiet affair. Haymitch is refusing to come over. He’s still mad that we laughed at his goose farming plan. Sae’s granddaughter is home in bed with a cold and so Sae fills two plates and takes them home with her.

I’m pleased to have a private moment with Peeta to talk about my idea. I’ve spent all day trying to figure out how to bring it up and, as usual, I’m fumbling for the right words to talk about our past together. I don’t want to upset him. He is watching me closely. He knows that I have something on my mind. He also knows that I won’t say a word about it until I’m ready. Finally, he breaks the silence by asking me about my day.

“It was fine. The hunting was good this morning. Dr. Aurelius called this afternoon.”

I hope Peeta will ask about the doctor so that I can mention what he told me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he just comments on the herbs Sae used to cook the pheasant I shot this morning.

“I’m usually baking when you leave to go hunting in the morning. You seem pretty eager to get out there.”

“It helps,” I say. “Like your baking. It keeps me calm, helps me to focus. I felt like I was going out of my mind when I was forced underground in District 13. The only thing that helped me keep my grip on reality was the daily hunting trips with Gale.”

As Gale’s name crosses my lips, the thought crosses my mind that dropping Gale into the middle of our conversation could be a mistake. Gale was a sensitive topic even before the hijacking. I quickly see that I am right. Peeta sits straight up, clenching the table with both hands.

“Gale.” His voice sounds flat and cold. “Real or not real. The Capitol was beating me bloody and you were frolicking in the woods with Gale.”

“Peeta,” I breathe. “It wasn’t like that.”

Peeta’s pupils dilate until I can barely see the blue in them anymore. “Real or not real, Katniss!” he yells. “I was being tortured and you were roaming about the woods in District 13 with Gale!”

I remember Dr. Aurelius’ warning to tell him the truth. I try to stay calm and remember that this is Peeta. I can’t fail him again.

“Real. You were in the Capitol and I was in 13 going crazy with worry over you. I made them let me outside as one of the conditions of being the Mockingjay. I needed it for my sanity!”

Peeta jumps to his feet and his pulse is leaping in his throat. He is still gripping the table.

“Your sanity! Katniss, they took my leg so that I couldn’t even try to run. They cut an innocent man and woman into pieces and made me watch. They tied me to a table and shot me up with poison. I was trapped! I was defending you, giving up everything for you, and you were spending quality time in the woods with your lover!”

Peeta pushes away from the table, his fists clenched in his hair. His chair falls to the floor in his haste to get away from me.

“Peeta, Gale is not my lover. He has never been my lover.”

“I saw it. I saw you naked with him,” he paces back and forth as he rages.

“Not real, Peeta.”

“The two of you were laughing at me for being such a fool.”

“Not real, Peeta. I have never laughed at your feelings. Not with Gale. Not ever.”

“You were pregnant. It was his. You told me it was mine.”

“Not real, Peeta. You made up a story before the Quell that we had gotten married in secret and I was pregnant, but it wasn’t true. There was no baby.” He is still pacing, his face contorting in confusion.

Desperate, I step in his path and put my hands on his shoulders. He tries to get away but I move with him. “Peeta, please listen. Gale was not my lover. There was no baby. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real. It’s not real. Please. Come back to me. I need you.” He tries to push past me, but I stand firm. “Don’t you leave me here alone again, damn it!” I shake him in frustration.

He squeezes his eyes tightly shut and whispers, “Not real. Not real. Not real.” I slide my hands from his shoulders to his wrists and squeeze them tightly until he finally looks up at me. His body is trembling with the strain of containing his emotions before finally collapsing to the kitchen floor. I get down beside him and take his hands from his hair. I lace them with my own and then bring them to my lips.

“I just got you back,” I choke out. “Please don’t leave me. Stay with me.”

He shakes his head as if to clear it, and I watch his pupils return to normal. Then he sobs.

_“Always.”_

I pull him into my arms, running my fingers through his hair until the shaking and tears subside. Finally, he sits up.

“You’re not safe with me any more tonight, Katniss. I need to go home.”

* * *

I am back in the dining hall of District 13 with Finnick. Haymitch approaches us. “They’re back and he’s just waking up. Let’s go see him.”

Haymitch is pulling me by my hand through the corridors of 13 and into the hospital wing. I open the door to Peeta’s room. He is sitting with his back to me, thinner that I saw him last but mercifully alive. I cross the room already imagining his embrace and instead I am greeted by a mutt programmed to murder me. His eyes are dark and crazed. People keep standing in his way, trying to defend me, but still he manages to get his hands around my throat.

He is screaming. “She’s a mutt, a mutt for the Capitol! I’ll kill her!”

They carry him away and throw him in a room. I am forced to watch as they strip him of his clothes and his prosthesis and beat him until he’s lying in a pool of his own blood. The thick, red puddle spreads across a pristine white floor. Four people in white surgical gowns and masks approach him with long needles dripping with tracker jacker venom.

He is begging for it to stop. I throw myself against the window, like Buttercup losing his mind over the flashlight beam. I hammer the glass with my fists, begging for it to stop, offering myself in exchange.

“Peeta!” I scream to the darkness of my room. My head is pounding and my heart is racing. My sheets are damp with perspiration and my cheeks are wet with tears.

I can’t stay in bed another second. I run to my closet and open the door, but the dampness of the spring night creeps up on me and licks at my slick, damp skin. I shiver from the chill and turn to grab my robe off the end of my bed.

The lights in Peeta’s windows catch my eye. I am drawn to the window like the crazy cat. I can see him sitting there, just out of my reach.

I forget about the robe and flee down the stairs, through the hall and out my front door in my shorts and tank. My bare feet fly across the dew covered grass of the courtyard. I burst through his front door and see him on the couch in his living room.

His arms are locked around his knees and his head is upon them. He is still wearing the clothes he had on when he left my house hours before. He looks up at me with eyes that mirror the fatigue, loneliness and misery I feel in my own heart.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says. “It’s not safe. It’s never going to be safe for us to be together.” There is a tone of hopelessness to his voice that I’ve never heard before.

“You won’t hurt me, Peeta. I can’t be alone tonight. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

There are no more words. He opens his arms to me. I run into his embrace and curl up in his lap. My head rests against chest and I listen to his racing heart. He places his cheek against the top of my head and he sighs. His body, so rigid only moments before, begins to relax.

We are both safe at last.


	4. Chapter 4

I wake to early morning beams of sunlight, feeling warm and content. At some point in our sleep, we stretched out on the couch, but I am still nestled in Peeta’s arms.

He is already awake and was watching me sleep. He brushes a strand of hair from my face and smiles at me a bit shyly. “Hi.”

“Mmm. Hi.” I give a lazy stretch, feeling a little stiff after a night on the couch.

Peeta is toying with what’s left of my hair. His own is mussed from sleep. He can’t quite bring himself to look me in the eyes, which I’m finding curiously sweet. “Did you sleep okay?”

I realize that I made it through the rest of the night without any more nightmares. “Yeah, I did, for the first time in a long time. You?”

Peeta doesn’t reply. I raise myself up on my elbow to gaze quizzically down at him and I see that he’s struggling with the words to tell me something. “Katniss, last night was the first time I’ve truly slept in months. Every time I close my eyes, I relive what they did to me. Dr. Aurelius prescribed sleeping pills and I take them so that my body can rest, but they don’t stop the nightmares. They just trap me inside them.”

I remember the horror of being trapped in my nightmares after Effie gave me sleeping pills on the train during the Victory Tour. I know there is nothing I can say that would help, and so I just settle back in the crook of his arm. We’re both quiet for a while. His fingers return to my hair and I’m rubbing my hand up and down his t-shirt over his heart, partly to comfort him and partly to reassure myself that I’m not dreaming.

“We’ve slept together like this before. Real or not real?” Peeta whispers this. His lips feel like a caress on the top of my head.

“Real. You and I used to hold each other at night in the arenas. On the Victory Tour, you would come into my train car and sleep with me. Effie and Haymitch didn’t like it, but we felt better when we were together.”

Peeta holds me tighter. “I thought maybe. There was nothing shiny about the memory,” he says into my hair. “But I was worried that it was just a really nice dream I had once.”

I want to sob. I want to scream and to rage that even those simple moments of comfort were stolen from Peeta, but I don’t. We lay quietly for a few more minutes and then I sit up and tell Peeta that Sae will be leaving to make breakfast at my house soon and it would be best if she doesn’t find me leaving his place still dressed for bed. I run across the courtyard and into my house. I close the front door behind me and lean against it for just a minute. My body is still warm from being held next to his and his scent – soap, spice and something that is just distinctly Peeta, still lays on my clothes.

I head upstairs to get dressed for hunting and when I come back down, I feel a spring in my step that hasn’t been there in a long time. I grab a slice of yesterday’s bread from the bin on the kitchen counter and write a quick note for Sae: Gone hunting. Ate breakfast. See you tonight.

I grab my gear and start off for the woods. I leave my father’s jacket behind. It’s still early morning, but the sun has already dried the dew on the grass and I can feel its heat on the back of my head and shoulders.

I wander through the trees, enjoying the beautiful day and the peace of forest. The squirrels and chipmunks are jumping through the trees again. I see a fox and her kits dash down a hollow log. Lady slippers are blooming in the shade of the tall pines that grow not far from ruined house by the lake.

When I walk through Peeta’s kitchen door two hours later, I have a wild turkey and some fresh herbs in my game bag and a bouquet of daisies and dandelions in my hand.

He greets me with a surprised smile and when I wave the bouquet at him, he tells me where to find a vase to put them in. I get it down off the shelf, fill it with water and flowers and plunk the vase on his kitchen table.

That done, I pull up a stool near the kitchen island and rest my elbows on the counter. He is making bread today, with an apron pulled over a blue t-shirt that matches his eyes. A dusting of flour covers the counter and accents well-honed muscles of his arms. The pans have been greased and the dough is ready to be shaped into loaves for the final rise.

We both know that this visit is a break from our routine, but Peeta pretends there’s nothing unusual about me being in his kitchen.

“Thom Applewood dropped by on his way into town this afternoon,” he says as he lifts the silky ball of dough and carefully shapes it into a loaf. “Apparently people are wondering if I’d be willing to take orders for baked goods.”

I ask him what he’s going to do, but in truth, I’m not listening closely. Our time together in the quiet of the dawn has left me distracted all morning with memories of all the time I’ve spent in his arms, some moments innocent and full of comfort like today, and a few full of hunger and passion. I watch his hands move confidently over the bread dough, smoothing it into a loaf and the memory of those same hands travelling over my arms and back the night we were wrapped around each other on the beach rises to the surface.

“I told him I’d think about it. I don’t really have enough space here to do more than a few loaves a day.” He gently lowers the loaf in his hands into the pan. As he begins to work on the next one, he starts to calculate how many cookies, brownies and small cakes he could make in a day in his current kitchen.

I’m only half-listening at this point, still pre-occupied by Peeta’s hands. I hear myself offer the use of the oven at my house. “It gets almost no use at all.” That gets me a happy look from Peeta and I’m glad for the impulse.

“You can’t cook. At all. Real or not real?” He already knows the answer to this question, but I tell him the truth anyway.

“Real, mostly. I can fry an egg or roast game over an open fire. I did some basic cooking for Prim and I after our father died, but you don’t just cook or bake, Peeta. You’re an artist.”

He grins at me. “You could make bread. It’s very basic. It just takes patience.” He puts the last loaf in the pan.

“Peeta, you know I have no patience. I’d just burn it.”

“You would not.” He sounds exasperated as he covers the loaves with a clean cloth.

“Would.”

“Would not.”

I grab a handful of the flour on the counter where he’s working and playfully throw it at him. “Would.”

Peeta’s face and hair are now coated with flour. He wipes the flour from his eyes and shakes his head.

He looks up at me, his face suddenly grave. “You are going to pay for that.”

Panic overtakes me for a moment. Have I brought on another flashback? Then, a mischievous grin cuts through the serious mask on Peeta’s face. He grabs a handful of flour from the bag and rounds the corner. I scream and try to dart away, but it’s too late. He grabs me about my waist and dumps the entire handful on my head. I scream again, shaking my hair and causing the air to cloud with flour before finally settling on our faces and shoulders, over the counters and floor. I laugh up at Peeta, who is beaming cheekily back at me. He has flour on the tips of his golden lashes, across his nose and cheeks. His curls are frosted with it. His face sobers and he pulls me even more tightly to him. It feels like I have, at long last, come home from the war.

“I wasn’t quite ready to let you go this morning,” he whispers in acknowledgement to the chemistry that’s flowing between us.

My stomach flutters as I wrap my arms around his neck. I see a fire kindling in his eyes that he doesn’t often let come to the surface. I reach up on my toes and kiss him softly, as I’ve done a thousand times before. I look at him nervously, surprised by my impulse and worried about his reaction. Peeta leans in and touches his forehead to mine as he reaches up to stroke my cheek. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“We’ve kissed before. Real or not real?”

I remember my resolve to tell him the truth, whatever the cost. I owe it to him.

“Real.”

“We’ve known each other for a long time. Real or not real?”

“Real. Peeta, we’ve known each other for our entire lives. Even before the Games, before the war, you saved me. You saved Prim, which was even more important to me than my own life.”

“The bread. I remember the bread. My mother was angry with me for burning it and angrier still that I threw it to you. I couldn’t let you starve, Katniss. Not if I could help.”

“That’s the kind of man you are, Peeta. You are the kindest, most decent person I know. I don’t know why you’ve ever bothered with me. I don’t deserve you. I never have. I couldn’t even bring myself to thank you for saving my life.”

“I loved you.”

He seems to know this, at least, is true. “Yes,” I whisper as my heart breaks a little. After last night’s scene in my kitchen, I know what is coming next.

“But you didn’t love me. You’ve never loved me. You love Gale. Real or not real?” His voice is strong now, but not angry. He needs the answers to these questions and only I can give them to him.

“It’s more complicated than that, Peeta.”

“Real or not real?” he persists.

“Peeta, since I was 11 years old, my focus has been on surviving, on keeping my mother and sister and I alive. I had no time for hope, no energy to entertain ideas about boys or romance. Gale and I had similar interests. Our fathers had both been killed in the mine collapse and we had families to feed.”

Peeta is quiet. He hasn’t pulled away, but he’s no longer looking me in the eyes. I am surprised that I have finally found the words to explain what I’ve never truly understood myself. I take a deep breath, determined to continue, to somehow pass this new insight onto him.

“Gale and I bonded. He was my best friend, and yes, it was turning into something more than friendship. I don’t know what would have happened if Effie hadn’t pulled Prim’s name out of the bowl. But, that’s not what happened. Prim was reaped, I volunteered and you and I went into the arena together. I was so ashamed that you had saved my life and now I was being expected to take yours. Then, you professed your love for me in front of all of Panem. You saved me from Cato. I didn’t know what to think, but I had to focus on surviving. That was my only goal. When they announced that there could be two victors, I realized that I had the chance to keep us both alive. That’s all I wanted -- for us both to live.”

“You pretended to love me for the cameras. You didn’t feel anything for me. Real or not real?”

“Not real. I did have feelings for you. I - do - have feelings for you, but I was too confused and afraid to sort them out. I’ve been too confused and afraid to ever sort them out.”

He shakes his head.

“It wasn’t all fake, Peeta,” I insist. “Please believe that. I need you to know that.”

He thinks it over, running his thumb along my jawline. Finally, he looks at me. “What about Gale?”

I sigh. “When we came home after the first games, he was angry and jealous. You were hurt because you believed it had all been a lie. I let you believe it because it was easier than trying to explain it to you when I couldn’t explain it to myself.” I think back to that time and the guilt I carried for hurting them both. “But, Gale and I were never able to pick up where we left off. Too much had happened in the arena. I wasn’t the same person anymore. I had a new best friend, someone who understood -- the only person who will ever truly understand -- what it was like.” I take my hands from his neck to cup his face in my palms and force him to look at me so he can see the truth in my face. “And no one has ever made me feel the way that you do.”

 It’s the closest I’ve ever come to telling Peeta I love him. I wonder whether he will accept what I have said. The old Peeta would have kissed me breathless. The new Peeta does not. Instead, he pulls my head against his chest. He kisses the top of my head and strokes my hair.

“Thank you,” he whispers. “When they hijacked me, they did everything they could to scramble my memories of you, to make me doubt you. But they couldn’t erase you. They couldn’t make me forget that I loved you. Everything you ever said or did is a muddled mess in my mind, and they’ve planted ideas in my head. I told you about the shiny memories.” Under his chin, I nod. “I can tell they’re false now unless I’m really upset, but I’m having a hard time unscrambling the real ones.” He pauses for a second, reflecting.

“You’ve never been this honest with me about how you feel. Real or not real?”

A tear drips from the corner of my eye and follows the contours of my cheek, washing away the flour in its path. My breath catches as I open my mouth to speak.

“Real.”

We continue to hold each other in silence. Finally, I raise my head to see that Peeta is crying too. Our eyes meet and he lowers his lips to mine. His hands are in my hair. I gasp and I feel his tongue, moving against mine. I reach up to pull him closer, needing more. That hunger I felt in the cave, on the beach, is back with an intensity I’ve never felt before.

Suddenly he turns me and presses my lower back against the island counter where he was working. He is desperately pulling at my shirt, reaching under it, sliding his strong, warm hands up and down my naked back. A current of electricity runs up and down my spine. I hear a groan rise from my own throat and I throw my head back to give him access to my neck, my fingers running through his golden hair.

My skin is on fire. I want to feel his hands slide up my belly and blaze a trail of heat until they cover my breasts.

I hear him speak my name. I am so lost in how he’s making me feel that I don’t hear the urgency in his tone. I whisper his name in his ear and then nip his earlobe. His breath gets ragged and I use my lips and tongue on his neck and throat as I reach behind him to untie his apron and then tug it over his head. I throw it aside.

“Katniss.”

I grab the hem of his shirt, desperate to feel his skin under my hands.

Peeta captures my hands in his before they reach their goal.

“Oh God, Katniss,” he gasps. “We have to stop.”

I try to focus, reconnect my mind and my body. I worry whether he is having a flashback, but one look at his face tells me otherwise. His face and neck are flushed. His lips are swollen from my kisses and he’s trying to catch his breath. He doesn’t move away, but he lets go of me and plants his plants on the counter on each side of my hips. His blue eyes are dark with passion and I can feel his arousal hard against the apex of my thighs.

I fist his t-shirt in my hands. “What’s wrong?”

“We can’t do this now,” he says breathlessly. “I’m still a mess in my head. I need time to think about what you’ve said. I still have so much to work out. And so do you.”

The truth of his statement cuts through the haze. He’s right. Taking this further will only confuse him more right now.

“Okay… ” I say. I close my eyes and continue to try to get myself under control. “Okay. We have a lot more talking to do.”

“Right.” He steps away from me and I feel a sense of loss. Then I see the corner of his mouth quirk up a bit.

“What? What is it?”

“You’re a complete disaster. Anyone with half a brain will know what we’ve been doing.” He giggles. Then I giggle.

“If you could keep your memories straight, you’d know I’ve always been a disaster.” Peeta snorts and then throws his head back in laughter. The next thing I know we are leaning into each other, chuckling uncontrollably.

Finally, I pull away. I wipe the tears from my eyes and tell him that I’m going home to clean up and I’ll see him for supper.

I pelt across the yard, hoping to get back into my house before anyone notices me, but I just don't have that kind of luck.

"Katniss!" It's Haymitch. I ignore him and keep running. He calls my name again as I reach the front door and slam it behind me as I bolt upstairs. I know Haymitch will follow me, but I don't care. I need a few minutes to collect myself before I deal with him.

I lock the door to my room and head into the bathroom. I hear Haymitch pounding on the door. "Katniss! I'll be downstairs. We need to talk."

I start the water in my shower. Turning, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and have to admit that Peeta was right. It's plain to see what we've been up to. I am covered in flour, except in the places where Peeta's lips and hands have travelled. My hair is mussed and my lips are swollen from his kisses.

I feel like a long dormant switch has been flicked on inside me and I'm not entirely sure of what to do about it. My body feels bereft without his hands on me and his lips against mine. My flesh is sensitive under my fingertips as I undress and step into the shower. The water bouncing off my skin sets off a series of tingles down my neck and spine. I wash my hair and run the soap over my body, rinsing the flour down the drain. I wash the soft folds between my legs where my pulse is pounding. My breathing shallows and I am tempted to explore further, but then I remember that I've got an angry Haymitch in my house, almost certainly pacing and probably drunk. It's not beyond him to beat down my bathroom door. I turn off the water and towel off.

I brush out my hair. It's just below my chin now. Sae was making noises the other morning about needing to take the scissors to it again. I'll have to let her give it a trim soon. I notice that my face is fuller than it's been in a long time and the new skin looks less pink than it did before. I find some clean clothes in my dresser and stroll downstairs to deal with Haymitch.

He meets me at the foot of the stairs and gets in my face. He is mostly sober, but I can smell stale liquor on his breath and his clothes. I expect him to yell at me for keeping him waiting, but instead his voice is cold and controlled. "Listen up, Sweetheart. I've warned you before about the dangers of ignoring me. I won't stand for it."

I walk around him, wordlessly, and go into my kitchen. I get a tumbler down from the cupboard and pour myself a cold glass of water from a pitcher in the fridge. I lean my back against the sink and look at him from over the rim as I lift the glass. "I guess this means you've decided we're back on speaking terms." The tone of my voice is bored and spoiled, designed to push him over the edge. It works. He scrubs his hand over his face, trying to stay calm.

"Katniss Everdeen, don't you dare take me for a fool. I've been watching the two of you dance around each other for days. Then, I see you sneaking out of his house at dawn and again a few minutes ago." I must have looked surprised by that. "You and Peeta aren't the only ones around here who don't sleep, Sweetheart. You clearly stayed there all night. Now I want to know what's going on!"

I put my glass on the counter with a thud and cross my arms. "It's none of your business, Haymitch." I scowl.

"The hell it's not! The courts appointed me your guardian and I'm his guardian too." He runs his hands through his hair, frustrated with the situation.

I tell him my 18th birthday was a month ago, and I haven't been a child in a very, very long time. "So, you're off the hook."

"I am also your mentor," says Haymitch, stepping into more familiar territory. "And, as you were so apt to remind me, Sweetheart, we had a deal to keep him safe. I am telling you now, as clearly as I can, be careful with that boy. His mental state is even more fragile than yours or mine. You could hurt him very easily. I don't want to think about the damage he could do to you if he snaps, or the damage he would do to himself when he came around and realized that he'd hurt you. Be sure of what you want, Katniss. If there's the slightest chance that he's not it, you need to walk away and you need to do it now."

I open my mouth to speak, but then close it. Satisfied that he has made his point, Haymitch turns on his heel and leaves.

I put in a call to Dr. Aurelius. He chuckles when he hears my voice and I wonder whether he's talked to Peeta yet today. If he has, he doesn't seem to share Haymitch's concerns. I decide I don't care. He asks me what seem to be my obligatory questions. Am I eating, hunting, sleeping, taking my medication? Yes, yes, yes – when I'm not having nightmares, no and I don't plan to. He launches into a spiel about the benefits of the anti-anxiety pills, but I cut him off and tell him about my plan. He listens carefully and then says that he thinks it could be good for both of us. He promises to send what we need on the next train.

By the time Sae arrives to make dinner that afternoon, I feel like I've been riding an emotional roller coaster all day long. She finds me by the back door where I am plucking and cleaning the turkey I shot for dinner. She leans against the doorframe and assesses my mood, silently. "You've the look of a woman who needs a cup of tea and a little less time in her own head. Bring that bird inside as soon as you're done with him. I'll make you that cup of tea and then I'll get him ready for the oven."

I stomp in 15 minutes later and kick my hunting boots into the closet, wash my hands and accept my tea from Sae. She starts to wash the turkey and then sets him into the roaster. "Katniss, I left some onions and carrots in the pantry. Grab them for me, will you?"

When I bring the vegetables to Sae, I surprise myself by staying at the counter rather than sitting down in my rocking chair. She sets me to work peeling the carrots while she stuffs the turkey with onion. She throws the peeled carrots into the base of the roaster with some more onions.

"Now, did you get me any herbs while you were out this morning?" I give her the sage I brought back in my game bag, which she chops finely. As she rubs the herb into the turkey flesh with a little oil and salt and pepper, she remarks that I'm more interested in what she's doing than usual.

"Peeta was teasing me this morning about not being able to cook, so I was curious," I grumble. Sae's grins at me. "Anyway, I have something I want to talk to him about tonight and I thought I'd show up with dinner at his house."

"That's a good idea, Girlie. When a man's got his foot in his mouth, best thing to do is give him another taste of it." She cackles and I decide to let her think Peeta's comment is all that's on my mind. The next thing I know, Sae has me peeling and chopping more vegetables to serve with the turkey. We put those on to cook as the turkey is coming out of the oven and then we make gravy from the drippings. Strangely enough, the work takes my mind off Peeta's flashback, our encounter and then Haymitch's lecture this morning. When we're done, I have a piping hot turkey dinner packed in a picnic basket that we found in the pantry, all except for the plates I insist that she take for her and Lily. Peeta is just opening the door to walk over to my house with dessert in hands when I arrive at his front door with my basket.

His eyes widen a little. "Hi."

"Hi. I brought dinner to you tonight. Can I come in?" He steps aside to let me in.

"It was nice of Sae to pack it all up," he says as I pass by. I remember Sae's words and decide to let him chew on his for a few minutes.

"Oh Sae didn't make this," I call over my shoulder as I saunter down the hall toward the kitchen. "I did."

I can hear Peeta kick the front door closed behind me and start to follow me down the hall. I carry the basket into the dining room and sit it on the table. He stands in the door, gaping at me, tonight's dessert still in his hands. I look at him as I start to unpack the basket. "Peeta, this is your house. If we're going to eat, you need to set the table."

"I've… I don't think I've ever used this room before," he stammers.

"My mother liked to use ours on special occasions and our houses are basically the same. Check that cabinet over there. I think my mother called it a credenza," I say and point to the long cupboard under the window. He starts rummaging and turns up a table cloth, some china plates and cutlery. He sets the table, saying nothing. We're both seated at the table before Peeta can't stand it anymore.

"OK, who are you and what have you done with Katniss Everdeen?"

I clap my hands together and give a maniacal laugh, thoroughly enjoying his discomfort. "Sae gave me a cooking lesson," I say with a shrug. "I just thought it would be fun to bring it over here."

"It's delicious," says Peeta sincerely. I tell him not to get used to it. It's nice to know that I can do it, but that doesn't mean that I want to.

"If you can make a meal like this, you can bake a loaf of bread," Peeta says.

I just shake my head. "Cooking a meal is about instinct. Baking is science that you make look like art. You just seem to know what to do. It's amazing to watch. I was wondering something this morning, though. How is it that you can remember how to make an entire batch of bread or an elaborate cake, but can't remember how you prefer you tea?"

Peeta thinks about this for a few minutes. Then he puts down his fork and spins his glass on the table. "I'm not sure, exactly. When they got me to make Finnick and Annie's wedding cake in District 13, I didn't need to think about it, I just did it. I didn't need to think about how to walk either. I guess baking is that basic for me. I've been doing it for almost as long. It's nice to have something productive to do that I don't have to think about. It gives my mind a break."

When we've finished, we clean up the dishes and carefully stack the china back in the cupboard. I pack the serving bowls back into my basket, finally grabbing the plant book, which I had stowed in there with our dinner before I left my house. We take our tea into the living room where a light summer breeze is blowing in the windows. The curtains are whispering in the breeze and I can hear the crickets outside. Once we're seated on the couch, I ask him if he finds that painting or cake decorating helps him in the same the way that baking does.

"Yes and no, I guess," he replies. "That kind of work requires my complete focus. I need to pay total attention to what I'm doing. So, it's not possible to turn my mind off the way I do when I'm baking, but it forces me to push whatever else is on my mind to the background and so it's helpful in that way."

I tell him I brought something to show him and I pass him my family's plant book. He remarks on how old it is.

"It's been in my mother's family for generations. All of the pages at the front were done by her ancestors. It's what she used to make her medicines for her healing here in District 12, but this is the part I wanted to show you." I turn to the section about edible plants that my father started. "This section is more recent."

Peeta flips through the pages politely and eventually comes to the ones that we worked on together. The change in his body language when he recognizes his own work is immediate.

"I did these," he says, tracing the leaves of the plants that he painted so carefully that winter before the Quell. "You were… sick?" I wait to answer him, in case it all comes back to him on his own. Just as I open my mouth to speak, his eyes widen, the way they did the morning he remembered how he likes his tea.

"No," he breathes. "That's not right. You were injured! They'd turned the fence back on and you had to jump out of a tree to get back. I came to see you every day."

He looks to me for confirmation. "Real," I tell him. "The peacekeepers were waiting for me when I got back. You could tell I was injured, but you helped me to cover it up."

He is smiles from ear to ear, flipping through the pages faster now, as the memories flood back to him. "Your ankle was broken and I had to carry you up and down the stairs. We spent hours on this book in your room while you healed. I drew the pictures and you wrote the text."

"We never finished, though. I thought we could work on it in the evenings, if you want to."

Peeta grins at me again, and then taking my hand, leads me into the study. I prepare myself for the shock of the memory of Snow in my house as he switches on a light, but this room in Peeta's house looks nothing like the one in mine. He has turned the study into his art studio. All of the furniture, including the horrible desk, has been shoved into a corner. The drapes have been ripped out of the big windows and thrown over the pile like drop cloths. Paint spatters the hardwood floor under an easel that is placed near the window where the light is best. Canvasses are stacked up in a corner, all of them facing the wall. "Don't look at those," he warns me, and remembering the train car full of his paintings of the Games, I decide I don't want to know what he's been painting lately.

Peeta rummages in a built-in cabinet near the window until he finds the pens he wants and a sketchbook. We take them back into the living room and sit on the floor in front of the coffee table. Peeta opens his sketchbook and he looks at me expectantly, pencil in hand. Just like before, he listens to my description while he sketches and then keeps adjusting it based on what I tell him until it's perfect. Only then does he take up his pen to ink the drawing into the book. He focuses on the task with his usual intensity, and as his pen brings my words to life with bold strokes of colour on paper, I marvel like always at his talent and wonder about the intense man who simmers underneath Peeta's mild exterior. His experiences in the Capitol have brought that side of his personality closer to the surface than it has been in the past, as though Snow's torture has flayed away at the barriers Peeta erected over the years to protect his sensitive nature, leaving it raw and exposed.

We work until we can no longer hold our eyes open. My house looks dark and cold on the other side of the courtyard and I am dreading another night alone with the mutts and the ghosts. I sense that Peeta is feeling the same. Finally he puts his pen down and pushes himself up onto the couch, stretching his bad leg. I close the book, hoping I'll be able to sleep when I get back to my room.

When I stand up, Peeta holds out his arms to me. "Stay with me," he says simply.

I realize in that moment, that Haymitch's warnings were unnecessary this morning. "Always," I say, and climb up on the couch with him. Peeta throws a blanket over us and we fall into a dreamless sleep wrapped in each other's arms.


	5. Chapter 5

I wake up on the couch in Peeta’s house feeling safe and content in his arms, just as I have every morning for the last two weeks. He’s still asleep when I open my eyes. I try to count his eyelashes in the early dawn light that is warming his face. Eventually, I get distracted by the way it’s reflecting on his hair, which is getting longer now and starting to curl on the ends. I run my fingers through it, and then stroke them down his face to his jaw, where the stubble of his beard scratches under the pads of my thumb. I don’t remember Peeta having any facial hair while we were in the arenas. I suppose that whatever concoction they used to remove my hair, they would also have used on him. At any rate, I prefer the stubble.

At 18, Peeta has physically left the boy who stood with me in front of the Justice Building behind. The lines of his jaw are stronger and more defined, as are his cheekbones. His shoulders and arms, always strong from years of working in the bakery, are broader and more sculpted than they used to be. Regular helpings of Sae’s cooking and his baking, combined with a little sleep at night have filled in the hollows of our cheeks and are erasing the dark shadows under our eyes.

We have not discussed me sleeping over yet. Every morning I wake in his arms and then sprint over to my house before the rest of the village wakes up. Everyone, that is, except Haymitch. He makes a point of being on his front step every morning and glowers at me as I run back to my house. If I’m back from hunting before breakfast, Peeta comes over and Sae cooks us something hot. If I’m not there, she leaves us two plates in the oven before she takes Lily to school.

Peeta decided to fill orders for baked goods for the other people who have returned to the district. They are still living in the Victor’s Village while they wait for housing in town. Thom Applewood drops off their orders on his way to lead the reconstruction effort in town. Peeta spends his mornings going back and forth between the ovens in our two houses and then Thom picks everything up on his way home. Sometimes he drops by early and stays to chat about how things are progressing.

Sae seems to have clued in to whatever is happening between Peeta and me because she hasn’t shown up at my house to make dinner since she gave me the cooking lesson. Instead, Peeta and I make dinner together in his kitchen. We’ve been spending our evenings working on the plant book until we give in to exhaustion and fall asleep on the couch.

I know that Peeta won’t allow me to avoid discussing our current arrangement for much longer, but it seems to be helping us both. My nightmares are less frequent and less severe when I’m with him. When lizard mutts hiss my name in the dark, Peeta is there to comfort and reassure me, just like he used to do on the train. He has stopped taking the sleeping pills entirely. The dreams seem to be less vivid, although he still has them almost every night.

We must have switched positions at some point in the night last night. Peeta’s arms are wrapped firmly around my waist and his head is on my shoulder. He has thrown his bad leg over mine.

Other than sleeping in each other’s arms, there’s been no physical contact between us since our explosive moment in his kitchen, although sometimes I catch Peeta staring at me with a longing on his face that I’ve been feeling as well. This morning, I decide to take advantage of his sleeping form and place a soft kiss on his forehead before closing my eyes and laying my cheek against the top of his head.

When I open them again the sun is high in the sky and Peeta’s blue eyes are gazing at me. He seems amused.

“Hey.” I stretch a little.

“We overslept.”

I frown a bit. “Oh no. I’d better go. Sae’s probably on her way to my house.”

Peeta shakes his head at me. “Katniss, you are missing my point. You and I. We overslept.” He is grinning like a child who’s just been given candy.

“But…”

He takes my chin in his free hand. “Katniss, who cares about that? Listen to what I’m saying. We slept well enough and long enough that we actually made it past dawn.”

Oh. It finally sinks in and I feel a little giddy myself. “I guess we did. Any nightmares last night?”

“Just one, but it was really shiny and when I woke up you were there, so it was OK.” He sits up and lifting my legs, swings both of his beneath mine, so he can stretch and flex his bad leg. “I think we should talk though. My leg can’t take another night on this couch.”

My heart falls. Of all of the things I imagined Peeta saying to me about our nights on the couch, a suggestion that we should stop has never entered my head. I sit up and wrap my arms around my knees. The idea of spending the night alone makes me want to crawl into the nearest closet. I feel calmer in Peeta’s house, where his presence is everywhere – in the paintings on the walls, in the deconstructed study, in the kitchen that smells like spices and fresh bread.

“Ok,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “I’ll go home tonight if that’s what you want.”

Suddenly Peeta’s eyes snap away from his leg, which he’d been carefully massaging, and on to me. “Go home? Is that what you think I meant? No. Come here.” He opens his arms wide and I scramble across the couch to sit in his lap. He holds me tightly and puts his cheek on the top of my head. “Katniss, I was going to suggest we sleep upstairs in my room, but I wasn’t sure you were going to be OK with that. Unless you want to go home?” I shake my head. He waits for me to say something else, and when I don’t, he sighs and settles us back against the couch. “You have always been terrible at talking about your feelings.”

“You’re not going to ask real or not real?” I ask wryly.

Peeta snorts. “Not necessary.” We both chuckle and then he sobers. “Are you happy here, with me?”

I remember my pledge to be honest. “I always feel better when we’re together. I need you.”

His arms tighten around me. “You’ve said that before?”

“Real. On the beach in the Quarter Quell. You gave me a locket. It had a picture of my mother and Prim inside.”

“And Gale,” he says.

I know we’re treading on dangerous ground. I look him in the eyes. “Yes. You put Gale in it too. You told me you wanted me to go home to my family. You told me no one needed you, but you were wrong about that. I do. I need you, Peeta.”

He cradles my face and kisses me softly. “I thought so. It’s settled then. You’re moving in. Why don’t you go home and get some stuff for tonight and I’ll make us some breakfast?”

When I step out of the house, I decide not to bother with hunting today. It’s nine in the morning and I can already feel the heat from the summer sun on my neck. From Peeta’s front door, I can see Sae getting ready to let herself into my house.

I call out to her. She waves to let me know she’s waiting for me and we go into the house together.

“Good morning, Girlie. I see you’ve already been to the boy’s house this morning.” Sae has her back to me as busies herself, digging out a pan from under the stove and taking some eggs from the fridge.

“Uh, Sae. Don’t bother. Peeta’s going to make breakfast for me. I’ve been staying over there at night.”

Sae’s hand, hovering over the pan as she prepares to crack an egg; stops, and then she carefully returns the egg to the carton. She turns to look at me.

I can feel myself blushing. “I’ve been sleeping on the couch.”

“If you think I’m going to lecture you, Girlie, you’re mistaken. I knew you weren’t sleeping in your own bed. It’s me who makes it after all. Anyway, most of the folks around here have noticed that your house is dark every night.”

I must have been blushing again because Sae grins at me. “Don’t let what other people think bother you, Katniss. You haven’t been a child since your father died. Lord knows you’ve earned the right to make your own decisions. I’m glad you’ve decided to live again. You and that boy make each other happy and it’s good to see.”

Sae puts the pan and eggs away before she wipes down the counter. “You know,” she says as she works, “I’m not sure you need me anymore. Thom and I have been talking a lot. He thinks I should start a new kitchen in town. They’re getting ready to start tearing down the Seam this week, and after that they’ll go through the merchant section and decide what can be saved. Anyway, I guess I’ll be a legitimate business owner before too much longer. Once I get the place opened, you should bring some of your game to me and we can trade like we did in the old days.”

When Sae turns around, I manage to choke out a thanks for everything she’s done for me. She pats me on the cheek on her way out. “Glad to do it, Girlie, but he’s back now. You’re going to be all right.”

Once Sae leaves, I grab a backpack from the downstairs closet and head up to my room. I don’t really have much to pack. I throw my few changes of everyday clothes into the bag and grab my toothbrush, hairbrush, and some toiletries from the bathroom. My robe, boxers and the tank that I sleep in are still lying on the end of the bed where I left them two weeks ago. I toss those in too. I buckle the bulging pack, throw it over my shoulders and head back downstairs. I grab my father’s hunting jacket, my bow and my game bag from the closet. My box is still on the table in the living room. I pick it up and walk out my front door.

A wave of relief passes over me as I cross the courtyard and I wonder, fleetingly, if this is how my mother felt when she boarded the train for District 4. Haymitch is out on his front porch again, I see. His mouth twists as he examines what I’m carrying and concludes what is happening. I stop on the stone walkway between his house and Peeta’s. “Well, let’s have it,” I tell him.

“I’ve said all I’ve got to say about this, Sweetheart.” He turns his back on me and goes inside.

My stomach clutches when I touch my hand to the doorknob, but I turn it anyway and step over the threshold to Peeta’s house. I am immediately struck by the delicious aroma of freshly baked cheese buns. I walk down the hall to the kitchen and find Peeta taking them out of the oven. “Hey,” he says, looking as nervous as I feel. He puts the pan down to cool and crosses the kitchen to me. He takes my box and sets it on the table before hanging my father’s jacket in the closet where my bow and game bag join it.

When he comes back to me, he fingers the strap of my backpack. “You travel light.” His words are almost a whisper.

I shrug. “I just grabbed what I need.” I think of Prim’s room, and my mother’s. “There’s a lot of stuff over there that I’m not… ready to deal with yet.”

He nods. “We’ll do it together when you are. You’re still sure about this?” He’s holding his breath.

Frogs are tap dancing in my stomach, but I manage to nod and give him a weak smile. “Yes. I’m sure. More nervous than I expected to be, though.”

I hear him exhale then. He smiles a little. “Me too.” I hope he will kiss me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he just reaches down and twines his fingers with mine. “Ok, then.” He smiles a little wider. “Welcome home.”

Peeta leads me by the hand back through the hall. I realize, on our way up the stairs, that I’ve never been upstairs in this house, let alone in his room before. It’s at the top of the stairs like mine, but when he opens the door, I see that Peeta has painted it a deep forest green. He’s pulled the heavy, pastel Capitol-style drapes out of these windows as well, but left the gauzy sheers that were beneath them in the window for privacy. A handmade quilt graces the bed, which has been turned so that it faces the fireplace.

“This is it. What do you think?” He’s biting his lip a little, and I guess that I’m not the only one who’s realized I’ve never been in here before.

“I like it. It’s peaceful. It’s open and comfortable. And I love the colour. It’s my…”

“Favourite.” I smile at him then we both start to relax.

“I painted it after the Victory tour. When we came back, I couldn’t stand one more minute of the white Capitol walls, so I ordered some paint and asked my mother for my old quilt.” I tell him the quilt doesn’t look old enough to have been his when he was a boy. “It isn’t. She said no.” He frowns. I squeeze his hand and hope he understands that I’m trying to tell him that I’m sorry. “It doesn’t matter. I doubt my old quilt would have fit the bed anyway. I found a woman in town who makes quilts and sells them, so I bought one from her.” He gestures toward to bureau. “I cleaned out a couple of drawers in the dresser for you, and made some space the closet.”

I let go of his hand then so that I can shrug off my pack and put it on the bed. I loosen the buckles to unpack it. Peeta moves behind me then and put his arms around my waist. I lean into him a bit and close my eyes just for a second. “I’m glad you’re here.” We are silent for a few minutes and then Peeta pulls away. “I realized after you left this morning that I hadn’t made you cheese buns yet, so that’s what we’re having for breakfast. I hope that’s OK.”

I grin at him. “I hoped that was what I was smelling. That’s more than OK.” He leaves me to put my few belongings into the empty drawers.

When I come back downstairs, Peeta is setting the kitchen table for breakfast. My box has been moved over to the island in the middle of the kitchen. A heaping mound of cheese buns await us. I put water on the stove to boil and get some mugs down for tea. When I turn around, Peeta has an odd expression on his face. His eyes are a little glassy, and he’s pressing his lips together, but one corner of his mouth is turned upwards.

“What? What’s wrong?” He just shakes his head. I put the mugs down and cross the room to him. I reach up and touch his face. “Tell me.”

He shakes his head, partly in denial and partly, I think, to clear it. “You’ll think it’s silly.”

“If something’s bothering you, I want to know.”

He laughs then, shakily, and pulls me into a hug. “Nothing’s wrong, Katniss,” he says to my hair. “I’m just happy.” He lets out a shaky breath, kisses my temple and holds me tighter. “I can’t quite believe this is happening.”

“Me neither,” I say, and let myself enjoy the comfort of his embrace for a few minutes. Suddenly, the kettle on the stove begins to whistle and I pull away to make our tea.

We settle in at the table and I eagerly grab a cheese bun and sink my teeth into the soft, flaky roll. It melts in my mouth. “Mmmm,” I moan and close my eyes. “So good.” I hear a chuckle from the other side of the table and open my eyes. Peeta is leaning on his fist, watching me. His other hand is wrapped around his mug. He’s grinning. “What?” I take another big bite and sigh contentedly. He snickers. “Spill it, Mellark.”

“I just remembered why I liked to make those for you,” he says, and smiles and shakes his head.

I grab another cheese bun. “What else are you baking today?”

“Nothing. Thom stopped by on his way to town this morning and I told him it was too hot to bake today. I’ll try to do it tomorrow. Are you going hunting today?”

“I don’t think so, we slept in and it’s too hot now. The animals won’t be active enough.”

“Oh.” He sounds disappointed. “I was thinking I could go with you. I’ve never spent time with you in your woods before. You’ve seen me baking and painting so…” he shrugs, dismissing the idea before I have a chance to respond. The open, laughing Peeta from a few minutes ago has disappeared, as though he was expecting to be rejected. He’s got both hands around his mug now and is staring down into his tea. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.”

“Peeta.” He looks up then. “I didn’t say no. I’ll take you into the woods if you want to go. I just didn’t know you were interested. You’ve never said anything about it.”

“You always say I’m noisy in the woods.”

I grin. “That’s because you are. But I have a spot I’d like to show you if you’re up for a hike.” When his blue eyes light up, I realize that I should have brought him along before. “We’ll pack a picnic and make a day of it, but we should get moving.” Peeta jumps up then and starts clearing the table. I climb the stairs to collect my backpack. I find an extra blanket inside the bedroom closet and throw it into the bag, and then I change into my shorts in concession to the heat and try not to think about the burn scars on my legs. When I get back downstairs, Peeta has packed up cheese buns and cookies, fresh fruit, a canteen of water. We pack it all into the backpack and then Peeta puts it onto his shoulders. When I reach for my bow and quiver, Peeta raises an eyebrow. “Just in case,” I tell him.

We cross the courtyard and enter the woods behind my house. My old house, I remind myself. Peeta reaches for my hand as the shadows of the forest falls upon us and I weave my fingers through his. I’ve held his hand a thousand times, but a new warmth steals over me at his touch today. For the first time, we’re walking through the woods for the simple pleasure of it. We follow my usual path and Peeta recognizes many of the plants that he’s drawn for the book. We take samples because he wants to compare them to his work and make changes. There are birds in the trees today, but the animals have mostly retreated to the cool of their dens. We come to a clearing and sit down on a log for a drink of water. Peeta asks if this is my normal route.

“This is the path I follow from my, I mean from my old, Victor’s Village house down to the spot where I used to enter the woods when I lived in town,” I explain. “I could probably get us to where we’re going from here without it, but it’s safer to follow the trail that I know. There are bears and cougars in these woods and they have young at this time of year. I’d rather not walk into their territory by mistake.”

“Ah. That’s why you brought the bow.” He pauses for a second and then takes my hand again. “Just so you know, I’m not going to be upset if you call the other house yours. I know that it’s going to take time before my house feels like our house.”

I tell him it might not take as long as he thinks. “That might have been my house, but it has never felt like home to me.” I stand up and pull him with me. “Come on, I want to show you more.”

It seems strange to me, to be walking through these woods without the fence in place and I wonder how people will feel about its removal once they start to return. The fence kept them in, but it also kept the wildlife out. Then again, since the war, the people of District 12 are much better equipped to protect themselves than they ever were before.

As we get closer to town, I hear the ruckus of the reconstruction effort and deliberately start turning towards the lake. The noise has captured Peeta’s attention and though he follows me, he keeps looking over his shoulder curiously. He arrived on the train at night, got right into a waiting vehicle and came straight to the village. I arrived by hovercraft and neither of us has been into town yet. I know they’ve dug up the meadow for a mass grave, but I haven’t seen it yet and I don’t feel ready to face it today.

“We’re on the right track,” I tell Peeta. “This is the hollow log where my father used to store our bows when I was little. After he died and I realized that I had skills to provide for us, I found it here waiting for me.” We walk along farther and I point out the spot where my father taught me to shoot and tell him about the cool, spring days when my father patiently coached me until I could competently draw back the string and send the arrow in the right direction.

We go farther and I show him the snare line that Gale and I used so successfully to feed our families. “You’re not using it now,” Peeta says matter-of-factly.

“I don’t need to hunt to survive anymore,” I reply. “And I’ve decided I don’t like traps very much.” Peeta gives me a look of understanding. We pass the rock where Gale and I used to sit, but I don’t mention that to Peeta, I just keep leading him towards the lake. I know we’re getting close when the air is cooler. Peeta looks at me curiously when he feels the change, but I just smile and pull him along.

I hear his intake of breath when he sees the lake. “It’s beautiful,” he tells me and lets go of my hand to get a closer look. “You should have told me where we were going. I would have brought my sketch book.”

I tell him that we can come back again sometime as I slide the pack from his shoulders. Peeta flexes his back and shoulders and I rummage around for the blanket. I throw it on the shore, not far from the old house and spread our lunch out on the blanket. I stretch out my legs in front of me, and lean back on my arms to watch the water.

Peeta joins me on the blanket and picks up an apple. His eyes are twinkling and it occurs to me suddenly that they are the same shade as the water. “This place is amazing,” he enthuses, and I hear the snap and crunch of the apple’s crisp flesh as he bites down. “It’s hard to believe anything this beautiful is located so close to the town and no one knows about it.”

“Somebody knew, once,” I say, with a nod to the house. I sit up and wrap my arms around my knees. “There are lots of old foundations all around here, but that’s the only building left. My father and I used to spend a lot of time here. It’s just about my favourite place in the world.”

Peeta moves then, so that he’s sitting behind me with his legs stretched out on either side. He pulls me back to him so that we’re both facing the lake and then he wraps his arms around me.

“Mine too, now,” he says, and plants a soft kiss against my cheek as we watch the lake lapping against the shoreline.


	6. Chapter 6

“This must be where you learned to swim.”

I must look surprised that he remembers this. “It just came back to me. During the Quarter Quell, we used to sit on the beach and watch the water. I guess that’s what triggered the memory. I couldn’t believe you knew how to swim. You told me about how your father brought you here and then you taught me how. Real or not real?”

I tell him real. “We spent a lot of time on that beach, fishing, keeping watch. It was safer there than in the woods.”

He cups my cheek in his hand and strokes it softly with his thumb. “You kissed me on the beach,” he whispers and starts to close the gap between us.

“Real. Like this.” An ache builds inside me as I bridge the remaining distance and bring his lips to mine. My hands go up into his hair, pulling him closer to me. I open my mouth in invitation and he accepts, sliding his tongue against mine. My hands fall from his hair so I can wrap my arms around his neck while his slide up my back, crushing me against him. We linger that way, his lips moving over mine. Finally, he takes me by my shoulders and breaks the kiss. He puts his forehead to mine as he tries to catch his breath. “Wow. Just give me a minute, ok? I just need to… cool off a bit, I think.”

I kiss him quickly and stand up. I walk down to the edge of the lake where the water looks cool and inviting.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“Swimming. We’re at the lake, aren’t we?” I reach for the buttons of my shirt. “Turn around, Peeta.”

“Why?” His voice sounds strangled.

“Well, if I’m going swimming, I need to get a few clothes off.”

“Katniss, I’ve seen you in your underwear before.”

“You haven’t seen the scars and I’m not sure I want you to. Turn around.” He does as I ask and I strip down, and leaving my shorts and shirt with my shoes in a pile by the shore, I wade out to the water until I’m up to my neck. I turn my back to Peeta and tell him to come on out. The water in the spring-fed lake is an icy shock to my hot skin, but it feels good just the same. I tread water to keep my blood moving, and I hear Peeta walking into the water behind me.

I feel a tap on my left shoulder and I turn to Peeta, but he’s not there. He snatches me by my middle from the right and pulls me under the water with him.

I come up sputtering and splashing. “You rat! I can’t believe you did that!”

He grins at me. “You dropped your guard, Soldier Everdeen.”

I splash him as hard as I can. He splashes back and soon we’re laughing and screaming as the water flies between us. Peeta charges forward, closing the distance between us. Certain he’s going to dunk me again, I splash harder.

“Hey, hey! Truce! Truce,” he calls. Without thinking, he wraps his arms around me to prevent me from splashing him again. We’re unexpectedly pressed up against each other, skin to skin for the very first time, and I feel a jolt of energy in my stomach that races right down to my toes. Peeta runs his fingers along one side of my neck and shoulders and places a kiss on my collarbone. “Don’t worry about the scars,” he says, his voice husky. “Not with me. Not ever. You’ve earned every one of them and mine are just as bad.” He tilts my chin, and I look into eyes as serene and blue as the lake we’re standing in. “You’re beautiful, Katniss, and you always will be to me.”

He brings his lips to mine then, and I reach up to wrap my arms around his neck. He probes the line of my lips with his tongue and I grant him entry. My tongue meets his in an intimate dance that goes on for a long time. My hands slide up into his hair and he pulls me to him even more tightly before kissing his way along my jaw and then nibbling my ear. My body starts to heat up, in spite of the cold water. I recognize this hunger now, the power of the two of us together, and I want more of it.

I can hear him breathing rapidly as his lips make a journey down my neck towards my collar bone. I gasp and throw my head back to provide him better access.

“I love the feeling of your skin under my hands,” he whispers. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to touch you like this.” He slides one of his hands from my back until it spans my side and then begins to follow a new path from my hip to the underside of my breast and back down again. My heart skips a beat and begins to gallop. My nipples harden in anticipation as each pass brings his hand closer to its goal before finally closing over me.

We gasp and his lips return to mine. I’m filled with a desire to touch him too. My hands journey from his hair, along his neck to his back. He shudders with the contact and it emboldens me. I explore his naked shoulders and the firmness of his bare chest. Peeta’s thumbs are tracing circles around both of my nipples now, sending a charge directly between my legs where a pulse is building. My breath is coming in short bursts. I need to be closer. I put my hands back up on his shoulders and push off the bottom of the lake so that I can wrap my legs around him.

The shock of our most intimate places pressed together pulls a moan from Peeta. His hands move from my breasts to cup my bottom and hold me against him. He rains kisses along my breasts at the edge of my bra. We are eye to eye now. I bring my hand to his cheek and kiss him deeply, and then pull back to look him in the eyes. They are full of fire, and I shiver.

“You’re cold.”

“No, it’s not that,” I say, reluctant to bring an end to this moment.

He laughs. “Believe me, I feel the same way, but it’s for the best… I think.” I laugh and put my legs down. “Come on.” He pulls me from the water. We grab our clothes, and throwing them down beside the blanket, stretch out side by side to warm up and dry off.

The warmth of the afternoon sun feels amazing against my skin. I close my eyes for a minute and soak it in. Peeta rolls over to his side and strokes my face softly. I open my eyes and his face is hovering above me, serious now. “I’ve been thinking – a lot – about a few weeks ago in the kitchen. I wanted you, Katniss, more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Well, until now.” It amazes me that Peeta can speak so frankly about what’s happening between us and I can’t even take off my shorts without making him turn around.

“It’s just that, we’ve never had the chance to get to know each other normally. We’ve always been thrown into one disaster after the next. I wish we’d had the chance for me to finally work up the nerve to ask you out on a date, to be silly and laugh and kiss you like we did the other day. Like we’re doing today. I want that with you. I want new memories of the two of us together so that I don’t have to ask you if they’re real. I want the chance to kiss you until we’re both ready to tear each other’s clothes off. I want to fall in love with you all over again -- the real you and not some ideal I’ve made up from a distance or someone I have to sort out from a nightmare created by Snow.”

I am quiet for a minute. I look up into the sky and I wonder if that’s why I’ve always held back a bit from Peeta. How could I be sure of my feelings when we have never been able to have a normal relationship? Then again, we have so much healing to do. Is normal even possible for us? I know that I owe it to both of us to try.

Peeta is used to me taking my time before I answer an important question, but he seems worried about my reply. He leans over me again, rubbing his thumb across my cheek, looking for some clue of what I’m thinking in my eyes. He seems reassured by what he finds there and he moves his hand from my cheek to stroke his knuckles along the bare skin between my bra and my underwear. He plants a kiss in the valley between my breasts and then nibbles his way along my belly before kissing me again, just above my navel. I feel my muscles clench and tingle not far below it.

“So…” I say, finally. “Are we on our first date?”

His chuckle brings a coy smile to my face. “Hmm…,” I feel his gaze travel my mostly naked body, and then move back up slowly, over my legs and hip, along my belly, lingering over my breasts and lips before finally settling on my eyes. “Well, maybe not the first.” He grins. “Even in my best fantasies, I’ve never managed to get Katniss Everdeen down to her underwear on a first date.”

I throw my head back and laugh. He reaches down and kisses a spot near my collarbone that makes my toes curl. I stop laughing and press my hand against his cheek in invitation. Then he bends down to kiss me again and we don’t say anything else for a long time.

* * *

 

We start for home late afternoon. The summer sun is still high in the sky when we arrive back at the house hand-in-hand. We eat a light supper and then sit out on the front porch, watching the sun set behind my old house. Peeta sketches his first impressions of the lake from memory while I curl up beside him with my head on his shoulder, drowsy from the fresh air and exercise today. We spend the evening comparing the plants we collected with the ones in the plant book. We are both surprised to discover they need very few changes at all.

Finally, we head upstairs to bed. Peeta lets me take the bathroom first, so I take my sleeping clothes in with me, brush my teeth and freshen up. When I come out, he has turned the blankets down and has a lamp on beside the bed. Another lamp burns on the fireplace mantel.

“I hope you don’t mind that,” he says, nodding toward the lamp. “I haven’t slept up here without a light since I came home. I’m not sure if I’ll need it or not. I can turn it off if you think it will…”

I cut him off. “It’s fine, Peeta, really.”

When he comes back out in his boxers, he’s got a nervous look on his face. “I need to get this artificial leg off. I don’t usually sleep with it on and it’s getting sore after the hike today.”

I’m not surprised by this. Peeta removed his leg every night during the Victory Tour. The long days on our feet were hard on him. But, it seems important to him that I don’t make a big deal about it so, I just nod and climb into bed. He sits on the edge of the bed with his back to me and removes the stump of his leg from the prosthesis and then pulls off the rubber sock that encloses it, protecting his leg from the metal connection. He swings himself around, pulling up the blanket to cover it quickly before sliding down under the blanket himself.

He flicks off the light, but doesn’t slide over towards me the way I expect and I suddenly realize that he’s forgotten this detail of our nights on the train. He is embarrassed by his leg.

“Hold me?” I ask him.

“Always,” he says, and wiggles over so that I can rest my head against his chest. We both sigh a little in relief, and then we’re quiet for a few minutes.

“I still can’t quite believe that you’re finally here,” he whispers in the dark. “I can’t tell you the number of nights I’ve laid here looking over at your window and wishing you were here with me.”

“Me too,” I tell him.

This seems to surprise him. “I didn’t think you thought about me at all,” he says.

“Not real. Before the war, I was over there trying not to think about you, and that’s not the same thing at all.”

He’s quiet again. “Why didn’t you want to think about me?”

I turn this over in my mind for a few minutes. “I was really confused. I didn’t think I could be what you needed. You deserved better than me. You still do.”

He laughs at that, but there’s a sardonic edge to it that I haven’t heard before. “You’ve said that before. Whatever gave you that crazy idea?”

“I’m scarred and mentally disturbed. I’m recovering from a nervous breakdown. I’m self-centred. I’m cynical. I’m violent and volatile…”

He rolls me onto my back and puts his hand over my mouth.

“Stop. Katniss. You’re beautiful. You’re smart and fiercely protective of the people you love and, yes, you’re cynical. You’re braver than anyone I’ve ever met. You saved your family from starvation. You were a mother to your sister. You’ve saved my life half a dozen times. You led a revolution and overthrew a corrupt government that had turned us all into slaves for generations. I’m just the son of a baker. I’m scarred and way more mentally disturbed than you are. I can be violent and unpredictable. I’ve got one leg and suffer from flashbacks.”

I pull his hand of my mouth. “And that’s all my fault,” I whisper.

“No. Not a bit of it. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you. I would never have fought this hard to get better if I wasn’t trying to get back to you. So don’t say I don’t deserve you, because I will never, ever be good enough for you.”

I’m speechless.

“And just so you know, I was watching you in my kitchen this morning – in our kitchen this morning – and my heart fell right at your feet all over again, just like it did when we were five years old. I’m in love with you Katniss Everdeen, and this time, we’re going to make it work.”


	7. Chapter 7

I walk into the study. Peeta is there, sitting behind the desk near the windows. He’s wearing the white tuxedo they wanted him to marry me in.

“I heard you wanted to talk to me.” I sit in a chair across from him.

He looks at me curiously. His eyes are dark again. Madness lurks in their depths.

“You’re not very pretty are you? Even less than you used to be. Now you’re damaged, broken, burned.”

“Peeta.” I rise from my chair and start to round the desk. “I don’t know what’s happening with you right now; what you’re thinking, what you’re seeing, but it’s not real. It’s not real.”

“Now that’s not very nice, Katniss. Not even remotely nice.” He gets out of his chair and advances on me. I back away. “I’m seeing clearly for the first time. I’m seeing you for exactly what you are.” I trip over the chair and start to stumble toward the door. “I see a mutt. A mouthpiece for District 13. A murderer!” We’re in the hallway now, and he’s bearing down on me as I try to escape.

“No! Not real! Peeta, please, not real,” I sob.

“Get out!” he screams. “Get away from me. You don’t love me. You’ve never loved me!” I start to run for the door. His screams ricochet in my head. “Mutt! Murderer!”

My hand is on the knob. I turn to him. “Peeta,” I whisper. “Please don’t do this.”

His face looms over me, but his eyes are blue now. “Tell me you love me, Katniss.” His voice is soft.

_I love you. Always._ My lips form the words but no sound comes out.

His eyes turn to ice. “Too late,” he says, and opens the door. I fall out into the pouring rain and it beats down on my face.

My heart is pounding in my ears, drowning out the roar of the rain on the roof. It drives like nails against the bedroom window. A summer storm. My face is still wet. I bring the sheet to my face to dry it, but it carries Peeta’s scent and only makes the tears fall faster. Peeta is still in the bed beside me, sleeping peacefully for once. I cannot wake him with this. Instead, I get out of bed and cross the room to the closet, where I crawl in amidst his shirts and weep.

_I’m in love with you Katniss Everdeen._

He didn’t even wait for me to say it back. He just kissed me good night and curled up behind me, as though he didn’t realize he’d shaken me to the core. Why can’t I tell a good and decent man, a man who has suffered immeasurable pain, what I know to be true? What is wrong with me? Am I as badly broken as the Peeta in the dream seemed to think?

My train of thought startles me for a minute. I’m in love with Peeta. When did that happen? Thunder cracks outside. Instinctively, I count the way my father taught me. One - one thousand, Two - one thousand, three - one thousand, four - one thousand, five - one thousand, six - one thousand. It booms again. Six miles. The lightning flashes and a sliver of light infiltrates the crack in the closet door.

Peeta moans in his sleep. “No.” Three, one thousand, four one thousand. It cracks and flashes again. Closer now.

“No,” I hear Peeta moan again. “Katniss. No.” He thrashes in the bed now. It must be a bad one. I almost never hear his nightmares. “Katniss!” I force myself to push the closet door open then and step out. Peeta is groping across the bed, looking for me. “Katniss, where are you?” He sounds panicked now. Another boom that shakes the house and the flash of light fills the room like midday. Peeta is sitting up in bed, his hair in a mess, his face filled with sadness and fear. “Katniss!”

“Here. Peeta. I’m here,” I call and I rush to the bed. My arms open as I climb up beside him. He wraps his around me, pulling me down into the soft, safe nest of our bed. He holds me tightly under the covers and the contact grounds us both.

“You’re cold,” he says, with his face pressed to my neck. I offer no explanation. His heart is pounding against mine. “You were gone. They took you from me and threw me back in that room, in the dark. They slammed the door. I was so afraid of what they would do to you and when I woke up you were gone.”

I run my fingers through his hair. “Shh… It’s OK. Not real. Just a dream. Not real. I’m here.”

“Don’t leave me, Katniss,” he chokes. My neck is wet, with his tears this time. “I need you so much. I love you. Stay with me.”

“Always. I will always be here.”

_______________________________________________

When I wake at dawn, the storm is over and Peeta watching me sleep, his arms still wrapped around me. “Hey.” He seems worried, edgy.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. What happened last night? Where were you?”

“I had a really bad dream and I was upset, so I got out of bed for a while. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just didn’t want to wake you. When I woke up, you were sleeping so peacefully.”

He looks towards the closet door and when he sees it open, he frowns and mutters, “Haymitch warned me about that.” He falls to his back, still scowling, and the darker side of Peeta takes me by surprise again. “You don’t need to protect me, Katniss. Are we a team or aren’t we?”

“Peeta.” He turns his head to look at me then, his face a picture of annoyance. “I would give anything to protect you.” He scowls again. “Not because I think you’re weak, Peeta. You’re the strongest person I know.” He shakes his head and I roll toward him, cupping his cheek. “Hey. We protect each other. It’s what we do. You are the most important person in my life. I can’t be without you.” The shadow on his face clears as he pulls me toward him, rolling so that I am pinned between him and the mattress. His thumbs stroke my cheekbones, while his eyes probe my face.

“Katniss, you could never lose me. Ever. I love you. Yesterday was the best day of my life so far.” He says this simply, but I am stunned. He chuckles at the look on my face and presses his forehead to mine. He holds me that way for a minute before I feel his lips press against that same spot, then move to my lips before spreading into a smile. “Katniss, yesterday the woman I have loved for my entire life moved in with me. Then she spent the day – an incredible day – with me, came back to our home and fell asleep in my arms in the room I painted for her. Best. Day. Ever.” He punctuates each word with a kiss.

I realize, as I look around, that I felt comfortable in this room from the moment I stepped into it. “You told me yesterday that you painted this room because you hated the Capitol white. Real or not real?”

“Real,” he says, enjoying that I’ve turned his game on him. “That’s how it started, but I had to pick a colour.” He toys with my hair, and grows serious. “And then I thought of you and our engagement. I realized there was a good chance you’d be moving in here with me. I thought it was a good way to show you how much I wanted to make you happy. The engagement might not have been real, but I was determined that our marriage would be.”

He wipes a tear from my cheek. “Well, you were right. I do like it. It’s perfect. When did you remember all of this?”

“The first morning after I came home. I was lying here and it all came back to me, so I got out of bed and dug you some primroses.” He shrugs.

I pull him toward me then and kiss him firmly. “I could lie here all day, but we need to get going.”

Peeta slides his hand under my tank and starts moving up my body, revealing my flesh inch by inch. I inhale sharply, wondering what he’s going to do next. “No,” he says, as his hand slides over my ribs. “I think your first idea was better. Let’s just stay here all day.” His hand closes over my bare breast and my eyes close in pleasure at this new sensation. I’ve been longing for his touch since that day in the kitchen. I whimper when his thumb flicks over the nub.

“Peeta, we can’t. I have to get some hunting done and you have an entire village waiting for bread and who knows what else is on that list downstairs.” He’s nibbling on my neck now. I try to push him off me, but he just takes my wrists and locks them over my head with one hand. I try to wiggle free, but he gives me a steely look that freezes me in place.

“We can’t, huh?” He lowers his head and journeys up my body with his tongue. I watch his blonde head travel up my belly, my rib cage, feel the heat of his tongue move over the curve of my breast before swirling around the pink tip and drawing it into his mouth. I moan. My hips raise off the bed involuntarily and I feel him hard against me.

He raises his head and grins at me wickedly. “Ok. Let’s get moving. After all, we have a big, big, big day!”

I grab his pillow and hit him with it. Hard.


	8. Chapter 8

When I come in from hunting a few days later, Peeta is heading across the courtyard, carrying a large tray of bread in pans that he plans to let to rise and bake in the oven at my old house. I meet him there and open the door for him. He sets the pans on the island and begins to cover them with a clean cloths.

I lean against the counter and watch him work. As soon as the bread is covered, I hook his belt with my finger and pull him toward me. He backs up a few steps and then turns around with a sly smile on his face, lifts my chin and leans in for a kiss. I meet him halfway, twining my arms around his neck, inviting him closer. As our lips meet, he slides his hand into my hair and cups the nape of my neck, while his other arms wraps around me, drawing me in. He smells of cinnamon and cloves today, and tastes of sugar.

Peeta and I have been trying hard to live as normal a life as possible for two people who’ve been through as much as we have. I hunt in the mornings while he bakes. We spend our afternoons and evenings together. I still haven’t been able to tell Peeta that I love him, but I’ve been doing my best to try to show him. He doesn’t seem to mind.

“Mmmm. You taste good. What have you been baking?”

“Bread, ginger spice cookies, cinnamon rolls. I made you some cheese buns so that I could watch you eat them.” He grins.

“Yum. Bet they’ll taste almost as good as you.” I kiss my way along my chin to his ear as my hands move under his shirt and slide up his abs. Peeta’s hands glide down my back to my hips and then he hoists me up on the counter. I hook his legs with my own and pull him closer. My heart begins to race when he flicks open the top button on my shirt and places a kiss on the newly revealed skin. I revel in the warmth of his lips.

“We’ve got a little time before I have to get that bread in the oven,” he says, flicking open another button and then another until my shirt is open to him. I push his t-shirt up over his head and throw it on the floor. Peeta’s lips start a sensuous journey along my neck, kissing down my chest and over the slope of my breasts to the valley between them. I hunger for him to touch them and when he does, I whisper his name as I run my fingers through his hair. I can feel him hard and ready against me. I strain to get closer and pull his lips back to mine.

“Well, now, isn’t this cozy,” drawls a snide voice from the entrance to the kitchen from the hallway. “I guess you’ve figured out what you want after all, Sweetheart.”

My eyes snap open as I peer over Peeta’s shoulder at Haymitch, leaning lazily on his shoulder against the wall. He takes a long pull on his flask and sneers at us. I panic, but Peeta calmly folds my shirt closed and holds me in the shelter of his arms. He rests his head on top of my mine as he turns to our mentor. “Hi Haymitch,” he says, still taking the interruption in stride. “I guess we forgot to lock the door. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t mind me,” he says, as he shuffles toward the kitchen table. “I’ve been watching the Katniss and Peeta show for a few years now, though I have to say it’s not exactly family viewing anymore.” Peeta’s calm façade disappears and I feel him stiffen; his arms tightening around me. I let go of my shirt and take Peeta’s face in my hands and look him in the eyes. I don’t see a flashback coming on yet, but Peeta is definitely angry. “Peeta,” I whisper. “Are you OK?”

He nods, breathing deeply. Making sure that I’ve got my shirt closed tightly in my hands, he plucks his t-shirt from the floor and pulls it over his head before directing his attention to Haymitch, deliberately taking his time in an effort to maintain control. “Did you need something, Haymitch, or did you just stagger over here intending to be crass and insulting?” Peeta’s back is to me now, his knuckles white as they grip the counter. With his broad chest as my shield, I take a minute to button my shirt.

Haymitch sounds a little stunned by Peeta’s reaction. “Geez, kid. It was just a joke.”

“Some joke,” Peeta replies. I decide it’s up to me to be the voice of reason, which feels strange because that’s usually Peeta’s job.

“The Katniss and Peeta show, Haymitch?” I say, keeping my voice level. “Think about that for a minute.”

Haymitch freezes. “Shit. Shit. Sorry. You kids have been doing so well lately that I didn’t think to be careful. I didn’t think, Peeta.” Peeta nods, accepting his apology. Haymitch takes a deep breath and scrubs his hand over his face. “I just came over because they called me from the train station this morning. My geese are arriving tomorrow and I was hoping you were still willing to help me with the enclosure.”

I hear Peeta agree and as they start to discuss how to build the enclosure, I wrap my arms around his chest. The tension is draining from his body now. He lets go of the counter and leans into me a little, with his hands on my arms. I rest my chin on his shoulder and ask Haymitch if he can pick up the parcels I’m expecting on the train when he takes delivery of the geese. When he says he will, I invite him for supper. He seems pleased by that and I wonder if he’s been missing us.

After the door has closed firmly behind Haymitch, Peeta turns to me. “The Katniss and Peeta show?” He looks pained.

“Not real,” I say. “At least, to the best of my knowledge. I was in arena with you, remember?” He drops his head to my shoulder and I massage his neck. “You did well,” I whisper. “You didn’t let it take you.”

He kisses my cheek and tells me that he wasn’t having a flashback, he was just trying to hold onto his temper. “It was just a really thoughtless thing to say and it got under my skin,” he admits, and sighs. “I’m not as patient as I used to be.”

I snort. “No one is as patient as you used to be.”

He shrugs. “You had your survival techniques growing up and I had mine.” He turns to check on his bread. “What’s coming on the train?”

“I asked Dr. Aurelius to send me some things from the Capitol.” The bread cloth drops from Peeta’s hand and he spins around to me, his face a mask of shock. “You talked to him? You won’t even answer his letters!” Peeta gestures towards the mantel at the precariously balanced pile. Piles, really.

“I talked to him the day after you came back and a few times since,” I say as I hop off the counter. “Anyway, that’s not all from him.”

Peeta heads for the mantel, his curiosity peaked now. He picks up a fistful of the letters and starts to flip through them. “Some of these letters are six months old! Have you opened any of your mail since you got back?” I take them from him, embarrassed, but don’t reply. “Katniss,” he scolds. “Some of this stuff is important.” He starts passing me stacks of letters. When I just stare, he gives me a look that brooks no argument and so I start to heap them on the island. Once the mantel is clear, Peeta puts his bread in the oven and then turns to me.

“So you haven’t read any of it?” When I tell him that I figured most of it was hate mail, he shakes his head at me. “Even after everything, you still have no idea of the effect you have, do you?” He pulls out the official-looking envelopes from the Capitol and passes them to me. I turn to toss them on the hearth, but he stops me. “I got documents just like those. They probably contain the conditions of your release to the district and information about your pension from the rebellion. You need to sign them and send them back. You’re lucky they haven’t decided to haul you back to the Capitol.” I put them aside to take home. We find letters from Johanna and Annie. I put those aside too. Several letters appear to be from companies wanting me to represent their products. Peeta says nothing when those end up on the hearth, nor when they’re joined by the ones from Dr. Aurelius. My hand hovers over the ones he passes me from Plutarch, but I put them on the keep pile. Nothing is left except for a tall pile from people I don’t know and two from my mother. I start to sweep them all into my arms for the fireplace when Peeta puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Katniss, don’t.”

“Peeta, seriously, I don’t want to read a bunch of letters from people who blame me because their son or daughter or parent is dead. And I really don’t want to read death threats for killing Coin.”

“And the letters from your mother?”

“She left me, Peeta. Again. I don’t need to read the excuses of why she did it. I know exactly why she did it.”

He pulls me into his arms then. “Katniss, I know you know a bit about what my mother was like. I don’t talk about it or complain about it because it doesn’t change anything. She was who she was. But if there was a letter from her or from my father, I’d need to read it. Your mother is who she is, but she loves you, Katniss.” I shake my head. “She does,” he insists. “I’ve seen it and I’ve envied it. She might not be here, but she hasn’t given up on you.” He puts the letters in my hands. “Just read them. You don’t have to reply to her if you’re not ready.” He gives me a hug and then places a kiss on my forehead before tossing all of the other letters on the tray he brought the bread pans over in. “Look, I’ll take all of this stuff across the way and sort through it for you. If there’s anything awful in the letters, I’ll get rid of them before you come home, OK?”

“Peeta…”

“Just read them, Katniss. You’re strong enough for that. I know you are.” He sets the timer on the oven and picks up the tray. “Don’t forget to take the bread out when the timer sounds.” Then he’s gone and I am alone with my ghosts. I settle down in the rocking chair with the letters. My hand shakes a bit when I pick up the one she gave to Haymitch, but I tear the flap on it anyway. My mother’s script flows across the page, lovely and delicate, just like she is.

_Dearest Katniss,_

_I’m sure by now you know that I’m not coming back to District 12 with you and you’re probably angry with me for making that choice. Please understand that District 12 was a difficult place for me to live, even before your father died. With Prim gone, I just don’t think I can face it again. I’ve spent hours these past months sitting outside your hospital room waiting for the few minutes a day that they would let me see you, talking to your doctors after they released you and trying to come up with a plan to help you get better. I even watched you on camera when you were in custody at the training centre doing my best to advise and guide your treatment team, but I would be no help to you at home. We’d drown each other in our grief._

_The doctors say you are no longer a danger to yourself or others, and I believe this to be true. I also know, in my heart that I am not who you need to recover. Prim knew it too. She fought so hard to get him back for you. He’s here at the hospital, trying hard to be well enough to come home. When he comes back to you, I know that you will come back to us._

_I know you’ve always believed that you were more like your father than me, and that’s true in many ways, but, we are more alike than I think you realize. Your father was generous with his heart and with his friends, like Prim. He had a way about him that drew people to him, much like you. But in matters of the heart, Katniss, you and I are the same. We are careful with whom we share ourselves and our devotion is deep and life-long._

_I have been offered the opportunity to go to District 4. They are building a hospital and they want me to train and lead the nursing team. I’ve decided it’s the best thing for me right now. I’ll send you my contact information when I get there. Please call me when you can._

_I love you. I hope you will understand and eventually forgive me._

  * __Mom.__



 

I let the letter fall into my lap and sit for a long time, rocking back and forth in her chair; thinking. Eventually, the oven timer dings so I take Peeta’s bread out of the oven and return to the chair.

When we got off the hovercraft, Haymitch told me why my mother wasn’t coming back and I realize that I understood even in my nearly catatonic state that this was no place for her. When my father died, the only thing that would reach her was a person in need and there is no doubt that her skills will be welcomed and respected in District 4 where people are more open to natural remedies.

She’s right that I’ve never thought that the two of us had anything in common. I’ve never thought her anything but weak for falling apart after my father died. All three of us would have died if not for Peeta’s loaf of bread that day. But then, could I have roused myself without medication to save anyone in those early days in District 13 when I worried that Peeta might be dead? It was only when I saw him alive that I found the strength to be the Mockingjay and that strength all but failed when I finally understood that Snow was torturing him to get to me. I sigh then and open the second letter.

_Dear Katniss,_

_Haymitch called to let me know that the two of you arrived safely in District 12. He says that he’s hired Greasy Sae to make sure you eat and take care of you. He also said that he gave you my last letter, but doesn’t think that you’ve been well enough to read it._

_I know that you saw it as part of the Victory Tour, but life in District 4 could not be more different than that District 12. I find the ocean gives me a great deal of peace. I have rented a house on the beach and take long walks along the shore when I’m not working. The administrators of District 13 shipped Buttercup to me. He’s been a very comforting reminder of Prim and has made friends with some fishermen down the beach. I’ve written my new telephone number at the bottom of the letter. I’ve tried to call a few times, but since you didn’t answer, I thought I’d try a letter again._

_Finnick’s widow, Annie, has moved home. She is pregnant and still grieving deeply. The idea of the baby, however, seems to be giving her life purpose. She asked me to provide her pre-natal care and I’ve agreed. She sends her love and said to tell you that she’ll send you her own letter soon._

_I’ve been staying in contact with your doctor in the Capitol. He says you haven’t been answering your phone for him either. I can’t say I’m surprised about that. He also told me that Peeta has made great progress and will be going home soon. If you don’t make contact with him after that, he may need to recall you to the Capitol. For the sake of your recovery, I sincerely hope that isn’t necessary, but I’ll travel to the Capitol if it does._

_Be kind to yourself, Katniss. Prim would want you to focus on the good that you did, not on the things that happened which you couldn’t control. Remember that when Peeta gets back, and find a way to live again._

_All my love,_

_Mom_

I am astonished by the my mother’s honesty in her letters and by how well she understands me, when I have done little more than tolerate her presence since my father died, and the greatest miracle is that she doesn’t blame me for Prim’s death. My chest clutches and my eyes fill with tears. I don’t bother to wipe them away when then begin to fall. When Peeta comes back for the bread a little later, I am still crying in the chair. He lifts me up into his arms and settles us both back in the chair with me in his lap. We rock that way for a long time, saying nothing before finally packing up the bread and taking it and my game bag home to make dinner.

When we get home, I call my mother and we cry for a long time. When I finally hang up the phone with a promise to call back soon, Peeta is working in his studio where a stunning landscape of the lake is taking shape on the canvas. I tell him that it’s amazing, but he’s frustrated with it.

“The colours are wrong,” he complains as he washes out his brushes. “I’ve been at it all afternoon and it’s still not right. We need to go back so that I can paint it there.”

I think of the hassle of hauling everything out to the lake and remember what’s coming on the train. “I would love to go back out to the lake with you,” I tell him. “But, what if I said you I had a way to bring the lake back with us that so that we don’t have to take all of your gear out to the lake on our backs?”

Peeta’s intrigued, but I refuse to tell him what I’m up to. I just tell him I’ll show him tomorrow when Haymitch comes over with my package. After supper, we go out to the front porch to watch the sunset. Drained by all of the emotion of the day, I doze with my head in Peeta’s lap while he sketches. I’m almost asleep when I hear Haymitch’s heavy tread come up the walk and the thunk of his bottle against the wood before he lowers himself to the step. Peeta tosses down his sketchbook and pencil and starts to smooth the hair from my face.

“So, our girl had a hard day, huh?”

“I think she feels better for facing it,” says Peeta, who is still stroking my hair. “She called her mother when we got home. She cried so much that I didn’t understand much of what was said, but I got the impression that her mother was doing the same.”

It feels odd to listen to them talk about me, but I don’t have the energy to open my eyes.

“Ana Everdeen is a good woman. She’s just had more happen to her than she was able to handle. But that’s OK. The membership in that club is exclusive and of the highest quality,” Haymitch says, and imagine him offering Peeta a salute with his bottle. “She’s still a nice looking woman, but she was beautiful when we were growing up. Plus, the head peacekeeper back then was a lot like Thread, so her skills as a healer made her a bit of a hero around here. There were a lot of young guys keeping their eyes on her.”

“You and my father both, Haymitch?” Peeta seems to be teasing. I try not to tense over the answer. I really don’t want to know if Haymitch had a thing for my mother.

“Oh, I looked at her plenty, but I never made a move. I had my own girl.” I force myself not to heave a sigh of relief. Haymitch takes a long pull from his bottle. “Anyway, her parents wouldn’t hear of a boy from the Seam sniffing around their daughter. Everyone at school seemed to think that she and your father were going to get married, and then Katniss’s father came along. The next thing we knew, she was moving into the Seam and her parents had cut her out of their lives.”

Peeta tells Haymitch that his mother would have done the same. “Well then she couldn’t have been too impressed by your declaration of love for a Seam girl on national television,” Haymitch remarks wryly.

“I was long past caring what she thought about anything by then,” he says quietly. “Keeping Katniss alive is what mattered.”

“I know that, Kid. It’s been that way for both of you, almost from the beginning.”

“Not for Katniss.”

“Hell, Peeta, the minute she pulled you out of the mud, it stopped being about the Games. By the time you two held those berries in your hands, she was all yours. She just didn’t know it yet.” Peeta and I both think about this for a while. Haymitch’s bottle bangs against the deck again.

“Well, I wish she’d figure it out. She still hasn’t said she loves me,” Peeta says quietly, a trace of hurt that he hasn’t let me see is in his voice. I feel a stab of guilt and force myself to keep slowly breathing in and out, wondering what Haymitch will say to this.

“She does. There’s not a doubt in my mind that she does. She wouldn’t be here with you, otherwise.” I’m surprised by this considering Haymitch’s lecture to me in the kitchen. “People like Katniss and I aren’t exactly in touch with our emotions. You should be paying attention to what she’s doing, and not what she’s saying.”

“Gale said she’d choose whoever she couldn’t survive without.”

Haymitch chokes out a laugh that sounds like a rough bark. “Gale knows her well.” I hear him take another drink. “If you had seen her in 13 while the Capitol was holding you, you’d understand why he was saying that.”

Peeta bristles. “It wasn’t a picnic for me either, Haymitch.”

“Settle down, Kid. That’s not what I was saying and you know it. I was trying to explain where Gale was coming from when he said that. Do you want to know or not?” I feel Peeta shrug. “Well, you saw what she was like when you got home. If you ask me that had as much to do with you as it did with Prim. She didn’t even try to live again until you got back. District 13 was very similar, and Prim was safe and sound then. Gale would have seen that, known that, even if he didn’t want to accept it.”

They are quiet for a while. Haymitch drinks. Peeta toys with my hair. His moodiness has passed again. The cricket song begins to sound like a lullaby. Snug in the warmth of Peeta’s body, I start drifting off to sleep again.

“Well, the bottle’s empty. I guess I should get back. We’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow.” I hear Haymitch try to rise and then grab the porch rail for balance. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do one of her sleeping before,” he remarks. I guess he means the sketch.

“I like to watch her sleep. We both sleep better when we’re together.” Peeta says this simply.

“I gotta tell ya, Boy, I envy that. ‘Night.” Haymitch staggers down the path. When the door to his house closes, Peeta gives me a light shake.

“Hey Sleepyhead. Wake up so we can go to bed. Tomorrow is another big, big, big day.”

He holds my hand as we walk through the house in silence, turning off lights, locking doors and heading upstairs. Once we’re in bed, Peeta pulls me into his arms and I curl up in my favourite spot with my head on his bare shoulder. “So how do you feel about today?” he asks.

“I think I’m lucky.”

He raises his head to look at me then. “What do you mean?”

“I’m lucky to have you in my life. Without you, I could never have found the strength to open that envelope. I would never have known how my mother feels. I thought she blamed me. It feels like a miracle that she doesn’t.” I raise my hand to his cheek. “You gave me that.”

He rolls us over then, and brings his lips to mine, softly at first, drawing my lower lip into his mouth slightly. Our eyes meet and then close, my mouth opening to provide him entry. As our tongues meet, the aura of comfort we were providing each other changes into a more potent brew. His hands plunge into my hair and then slide down over my neck to my breast. I arch against his hand as he cups it and then flicks his thumb over the tip. It immediately hardens under his administration and he rolls it lightly between his fingertips. His lips move down my neck and then he draws my breast into his mouth through my tank. I moan and pull his face back to mine for another kiss. His leg slips between both of mine as his hand grips my hip, pulling me tight against him. I give myself over to my instincts riding shamelessly against his leg as his mouth returns to my neck, his breath ragged and hot in my ear.

I am craving the heat of his skin against mine. I reach down and pull my shirt over my head. Peeta helps me and then tosses it to the floor. We stop for a moment to look at each other then. I take in his broad chest and the way his blue eyes have deepened to the colour of sapphires.

“You are so beautiful. Your eyes turn to smoke when we’re together like this,” his voice is deep, not quite steady.

I kiss him again, turning us as I push him back against the bed, relishing heat of our flesh together, and the low burn that has started deep in my belly turns to fire. I bite his ear and then kiss a path along his jaw to his neck. I continue over his chest, where the fine hair tickles my face softly before tracing each of his nipples with my tongue. My journey ventures lower across his abs and I place a row of kisses along the waistband of his boxers.

“Katniss?” His voice is uncertain. I look up at him, and he’s watching me with wide eyes, his chest is heaving as his tries to catch his breath. I smile mischievously, before working my way back up his chest to the juncture with his neck.

“I thought you were going to … going to …” He stops, embarrassed.

“Would you like that?” I whisper this in his ear, but I barely recognize my own voice. It sounds deep and raspy. My hand glides down again over the hard planes of his body before settling on the cotton of his boxers. Peeta gasps for air as his hips rise off of the bed to meet my hand. I rub my hand up and down the length of him, reveling in the power of his reaction before he takes my hand away and rolls with me onto my back again.

Peeta plunders my mouth, his hand returning to my breast again; and then he too follows a path down my body. When he takes the sensitive tip of my breast into his mouth, I cry out from the pleasure, holding his head in place as he toys with the other one. I squirm and writhe beneath him. Eventually he kisses along the valley between them up to the other side and where gives my other breast the same attention.

I am pulsing with need for him now, my body like my bow string, taut and straining for release. I am hot and wet between my thighs. Peeta lifts his head from my breast and with his eyes on mine, his hand trails along my body to the hem of my panties. When I nod in agreement, he pulls them off my hips and down my legs where I kick them off. I am filled with a potent mix of anxiety and anticipation, but I don’t stop him as he brings his hand to the curls between my legs. A whimper escapes my lips. He moves his mouth to the spot on my neck near my shoulder that I especially like and then slides his fingers into the soft folds. My eyes close and my breathing shallows as I concentrate on the feeling of his fingers exploring my most intimate place. When they land on exactly the right spot, I pour into his hand, calling his name over and over as I fly.

When the world rights itself, Peeta is looking at me with a self-satisfied expression.

I raise myself off the bed wrapping my arms around his neck. With gentle pressure from me, he lays down again, stroking his hands down my back.

“Now you,” I say, and together we remove his boxers and toss them onto the floor. He groans as my hand wraps around him, sliding up down the shaft, before sliding over the head and down again. He whispers my name. Emboldened, I take him into my mouth and roll my tongue over the head. He cries out and fists his hands in my hair. I suck him in a little deeper and then slide back up, moving my tongue over him again. He calls out to me and when I look at him, he growls, “Come here.” With my hand now gliding easily up and down his penis I start to move toward him. He meets me halfway and kisses me deeply.

“I’m not sure how much more I can hold on,” he whispers into my ear as his body responds to my hand. “I’ve wanted you for so long.”

“Then don’t,” I say simply and we fall back to the mattress. His hips are rising off the bed to meet me now, faster and faster. “I love you,” he gasps as he reaches his peak and spills onto my hand.

* * *

 

When my eyes open in the morning, I can hear Peeta breathing softly against my neck. We are spooned together under the covers, his chest pressed against my naked back, his hand over my breast. I revel in the warmth and safety of his arms. I feel lighter somehow. A little of the guilt I carry has been set aside and replaced with a sensation entirely unfamiliar to me. I wonder if it’s hope.

I turn over and watch Peeta as he sleeps, tracing his cheekbone with my thumb, playing with the waves that are about to become curls. My lips touch his, softly. His eyes flutter open, but he’s still not quite awake.

“Hey.” I say, feeling shy. I kiss him again.

“Morning,” he mutters sleepily.

“Just rest, OK? I’m going to grab a shower. I didn’t want you to wake up and find me gone.”

His eyes close and he nods in acknowledgement.

When I emerge 20 minutes later with my hair pinned up on my head and a plan to crawl back in next to Peeta, he is gone. The bed is a rumpled mess that we’ll deal with later. I grab clean underwear from my drawer and snatch his t-shirt off the floor, wanting something that smells like him next to my skin. I feel it skimming my thighs as I pad lightly down the stairs. The smell of toast wafts from the kitchen and so I wander in that direction.

“Peeta, did you put the teapot on?” I ask as I enter the room. I pull up short. Haymitch and Peeta are standing on each side of the kitchen island, cups of tea steaming between them. Peeta is wearing his pajama bottoms and he has just sunk his teeth into a piece of toast. He grins as he chews and waits for the fireworks.

Haymitch wastes no time. “Sweetheart, just how much time do you spend half-naked in the kitchen?”

Peeta chokes on the toast. I decide to roll with it. “Good question, I say. Let me think about it,” I get a mug out of the cupboard and pour myself a cup of tea. “I guess about half as often as I’m half-naked upstairs and twice as often as I’m half-naked the living room.” Haymitch lets loose his bark of a laugh then and I watch Peeta’s shoulders rise and fall as he chuckles. I place a kiss on his back between them and then rise up on my toes to whisper in his ear just loud enough for Haymitch to hear. “You left your shirt upstairs.” With his attention divided, my hand sneaks around him snatches a piece of his toast.

“Hey, that’s mine,” he exclaims.

This time it’s me grinning around the toast. “It’s good too,” I say as I back out of the kitchen, mug and toast in hand. “I’ll just go get dressed. I’ll be right back.”

Haymitch’s roar of laughter follows me out of the room and up the stairs.

When I come back down, Peeta has made more toast and is sitting at the table with Haymitch, my parcel from Dr. Aurelius between them. Peeta is so obviously curious that it makes me want to laugh, so I make a show of getting myself another cup of tea and a piece of toast.

“Sweetheart,” says Haymitch. “If you don’t hurry up, the boy is going to rip that package open himself. He’s not going to be able to stand the suspense much longer.”

I pull the parcel toward me and investigate it. Dr. Aurelius has wrapped whole thing in brown paper and secured it with packing tape.

“Oops. I need a knife.” I meander over to the cutlery drawer.

“Katniss!” Peeta groans. He’s at the edge of his patience.

“C’mon, Sweetheart. My geese are out there in a crate and he won’t budge until he sees what you asked the good doctor for.”

I deftly slice the tape on the paper while Peeta drums his fingers on the table. The paper falls away, exposing a box that I cut open, which holds two thick, hardcover books and two smaller boxes.

Peeta flips through the books and then gives me a perplexed look when he discovers they’re blank.

“When we were working on the plant book, I had the idea that we could create a memory book and write down all of our memories of the people we know who died in the rebellion and in the Games. We’ll work together on what we want to say. You can do the art and I’ll write it all down in the book, just like we did with the plants. Dr. Aurelius thought it would be good for us both.” I turn to Haymitch then. “We’re going to need your help, though, Haymitch with some of the victors.” He nods gravely.

“Katniss, do you really think we’re going to fill two books?”

“No, just one. These boxes are for the other one.” I take the knife and carefully slice open the first one, lifting out a sleek new camera.

“A camera!” Peeta is delighted. “I’ve always wanted one, but it used to be so hard to get something like this here.” He busies himself with it, digging in the box for the instructions and playing with the dials.

Haymitch is more realistic. “Sweetheart, there’s no place in the district to get pictures developed. It could be years before anyone around here but us could even afford something like this. You’ll have to send them to the Capitol to be developed and if you do, every picture you take will be on the evening news.”

I grin at Haymitch and slice open the second box and pull out a small flat device. “This is a photo printer. Dr. Aurelius says there’s a little card in the camera that we can stick in the printer and it will print out the pictures for us. I’ll have to keep ordering supplies from the Capitol, but at least our privacy is protected.”

Haymitch claps me on the shoulder then, transmitting a silent message of approval before turning his attention to Peeta, who is so absorbed in studying the camera that Haymitch has to speak him twice before he’s able to get his attention. “I’m going to go home and start bringing everything we need out to the backyard so we can get started before it’s too hot.”

Peeta nods. “I’ll be over in a minute. I just want a second with Katniss.”

I tell Haymitch I’ll be over to help when I get back from hunting. As the door closes, Haymitch yells something about not making Peeta late and keeping our clothes on. I am still laughing when Peeta pulls me from my chair, enfolding me in a hug as I straddle his lap. “Last night is ranking pretty high on my best day ever list,” he whispers, placing a kiss just below my ear.

I pull back and frame his face with my hands and then I kiss him softly. “Mine too. Haymitch got here much earlier than I was expecting. I was planning to crawl back into bed with you this morning.”

Peeta groans and kisses my forehead. “I can’t think about that right now or I’m going to be very late for helping Haymitch. I don’t think his heart could take it if he catches us three times in two days.” We giggle and then Peeta’s attention turns back to the camera.

“The camera is great, Katniss, but I’m still not sure what this is all about.”

I can feel myself smiling as I look up at him. “The other day at the lake, you told me that you wanted us to make new memories that you know are real. I thought that we could take pictures of all the things we do that are important to us and make us happy and put them in the second book. Then on the bad days, we’ll have all the good memories to hang onto and the pictures to remind us that they’re real.”

Peeta freezes for a minute, his face swimming with emotion, before pulling me into another tight embrace. He takes my face in his hands when he pulls away, pressing soft kisses cross my cheeks and nose and then tells me he loves me before bringing his lips to mine. I deepen the kiss, trying to express everything that I have in my heart for him. When I pull away, his eyes are shining with happiness. “You are amazing,” he says. “This is a great idea.” He rummages in the box, turning up a couple of batteries and then slips them into the camera. He looks it over, flicks a switch and brings it to life. With me on his still on his lap he turns the camera to face us, stretching out his arm as far as he can reach. “Smile, Katniss. I always want to remember the day I knew you loved me back.”


	9. Chapter 9

My hunting goes surprisingly well today, given the lateness of the morning when I started out. I manage to bag a turkey and two squirrels and since my game bag is bursting at the seams, I decide to take the squirrels to Sae. She seems pleased to see me when she opens the door to the house next to my old one where she and Lily are living with another family. Her wiry mop of grey hair is tied back today in concession to the summer heat, but wisps of it are falling around her face. She grins as she steps aside to let me in.

“Well, now look what the cat dragged in. I figured it would be a few days yet before you and the Boy realized anyone else existed around here.”

Two can play this game. “We figured it was time to come up for air. It was that or starve to death.”

She cackles appreciatively and I pull the squirrels out of my bag. “I brought you these,” I tell her. “I thought maybe you’d take them in trade for a haircut.”

Sae examines the squirrels carefully before putting them in the sink. “There’s no need to trade with family, Girlie, and I’d say you and the boy are as close as I’ve got to that these days other than Lily.”

“But Sae, you said you wanted to trade once you got your kitchen open.”

“That’s different. That’s business, this is family taking care of each other. Now get in here.”

Deciding that’s as close to a declaration of love as I’ll ever get from Sae, I just tell her to consider the squirrels a gift. I toss the game bag by the kitchen door. “Haymitch’s geese arrived today.” My lips quirk up the words leaves my lips.

Sae snorts and chuckles while she rummages in a drawer for some scissors. “Poor geese,” she mutters in the same tone that Peeta used weeks ago and the memory causes a fresh wave of laughter. She bustles off to the bathroom for a comb. “Pull one of those stools up to the window by the sink,” she tells me on her way back. When we’re both settled in the light, she starts to pull the comb through my hair, starting at the bottom to brush out the tangles caused my time in the woods. I’m reminded of my mother and her gentle hands combing my through hair after a bath.

“I called my mother,” I tell Sae, grateful that my back is to her. To her credit, Sae doesn’t miss a beat, she just asks me how my mother is doing so I tell her about the rented house on the beach with Buttercup. “He’s probably gorging himself on fish guts,” I tell her. Sae chuckles as she begins to trim the ends of my hair, which is now brushing the tops of my shoulders.

“Your hair’s almost long enough to start braiding it again,” she says as the first strands fall to the floor. I say nothing. “Then again, leaving it loose covers up these scars on the back of your neck. We’ll need to think about that next time.” I offer up a prayer of gratitude for Sae’s comfort with silence. She snips and trims patiently before standing back to admire her handiwork, then she brushes the hair off my shoulders and sweeps around my feet before I hop off the stool, muttering my thanks to her.

“You should bring Lily over later on to see Haymitch’s geese,” I tell her. “Actually, why don’t you both come over for dinner? He and Peeta should be finished building the by dinnertime. I shot a big turkey this morning. I’m going to do it up the way you showed me.”

“Well, then, we’ll do just that,” she says with a smile. “I’ll come over a bit early to help.”

* * *

Once I get the turkey in the oven, I sit on Haymitch’s back step, delivering cold glasses of water and watching them work. Haymitch is fussing over the construction of a little shelter to keep his new pets out of the elements while Peeta drives fence posts into the hard clay of District 12. It’s exhausting, back-breaking work. Peeta’s hair and back are soaked with sweat and every time they take a break to cool off, Peeta adds a new item to the list of favours that Haymitch is going to owe him: carrying flour back from the train; moving my heavy wardrobe of clothes that Cinna me out of the basement, across the courtyard and back down; lugging my dresser down the stairs on his back and up into our room; helping us dig a garden in the spring. Haymitch snarls that this is payback for “keeping your asses alive over the last three years” and demands a beer from the fridge.

When Sae finds me, I’m sitting on Haymitch’s back step playing with four fuzzy goslings while their mother hisses and thrashes in the crate. She’s not very happy with me handling her babies, but I’m ignoring her since she offered to bite me when I tried to open the box to let her out earlier.

Lily’s eyes widen when she sees the babies and she kneels down beside me, petting one softly with her finger. He stands still and lets her stroke his back. Sae is watching her closely. “Be gentle, Lily,” she cautions. Lily appears to not be listening, but her touch remains light.

Lily’s eyes connect with mine. “Quack,” she says solemnly. I smile at her.

“This is a baby goose, Lily. They say, ‘Honk’. Can you say that?” Lily stands up then, jumping up and down and flapping her hands. “Honk! Honk!” She seems delighted with herself.

Sae just shakes her head and laughs. “She loves animals. She always makes a connection with others when animals are involved.” Lily settles down with the goslings again and Sae asks me how dinner preparations are going. I tell her everything seems to be under control, and we’ll eat once Haymitch and Peeta have finished with the enclosure. I get us cold drinks and she surveys what’s going on in the backyard. Her eyes rest on Peeta for a minute, who is wiping the sweat from his face with his forearm.

“The boy certainly has the shoulders for this kind of work,” she remarks with a sly look at me. I silently agree, though I pretend I didn’t hear her. She grins. “But he looks plenty hot enough. I’d get him something to drink, Girlie, before he passes out.”

I get up off the steps and pass Peeta my glass of water. He gulps it down greedily. “Tired?”

“I thought you were going to help,” he complains.

“I’m making dinner and keeping the goslings company. That’s helping,” I protest, but he makes a sound of disbelief.

“I’m all finished with the fence posts,” he says. “If you could help me attach the chicken wire, I could be done.”

Sae comes up behind us with two more glasses of water in hand. She passes one to Peeta. “Why don’t you help the boy finish? I’ll take this to Haymitch and then finish up dinner.”

Peeta gloats. “Serves you right for sitting up there all afternoon.”

“Hey! I went hunting. I got dinner started. I was attacked by a goose with anger issues.” I step close enough to wrap my arms around his waist. “And anyway, I was enjoying watching you work.” I hear Haymitch curse in the background, but I ignore it.

“Is that so?” Peeta’s eyes are gleaming now as he uses his free arm to tug me in closer to him, a wicked grin on his face. “I didn’t see you as the kind of girl who sits around ogling the guys. You never spent much time at my wrestling matches.”

“I had other priorities back then,” I say, and rise up on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “And anyway, I’d never seen you with your clothes off.” Peeta chuckles and leans in to kiss me. I let out a soft sigh when his lips meet mine. Just as I sink into the kiss, we are struck by a wave of cold water coursing over us. We push away from each other in shock, sputtering. I think Peeta curses. I know I do.

“You two looked like you needed to cool off,” remarks Haymitch from the step, a bucket dangling from his hand. “Now, quit distracting the kid, Sweetheart, and help him finish my damn fence.”

* * *

We decide to have a picnic on the back lawn between our two houses. It’s too hot in our house to enjoy the meal and eating in Haymitch’s disaster of a home isn’t really an option.

We fill our plates in the house and then sit around on a blanket, enjoying the meal and each other’s company. I bring the new camera out and snap a few pictures. Haymitch and Peeta plow through two platefuls of food.

Halfway through his second helping, Haymitch eyes me over his plate. “Peeta says you called your mother.” I nod. “What brought that on?”

“It was time, I guess,” I mutter, playing with my food.

Peeta rolls his eyes. “She had six months’ worth of unopened mail over there, including some from her mother. I made her open it,” says Peeta in an exasperated tone. Haymitch makes a crack about how I’m rubbing off on Peeta and I hear Sae cackle.

“I just didn’t want to deal with it,” I say defensively. “I didn’t need to read a bunch of hate mail.”

“It wasn’t like that, Katniss,’ Peeta tells me. “You should read them. They’re in a folder in one of the cupboards in the studio.”

“So no death threats?” I’m surprised by this, but I watch a look pass between Peeta and our mentor.

“One or two,” Peeta says quickly. “I’m sure it’s nothing.” I ask where they are and Peeta says he took them to Haymitch.

I look expectantly at Haymitch, but now he’s the one playing with his food. “I sent them to the Capitol,” he mutters. “Figured he’d know what to do with them.”

I put down my plate and stare at Haymitch until he’s forced to look up. “Not Plutarch.”

Haymitch and I hold a silent conversation. My lips purse while I stare at him. He nods in understanding. It only takes seconds but it doesn’t slip past Peeta, who’s all too familiar with our habits. I see his jaw twitch as he puts his plate down. He’s mad at us both, but I know he won’t bring it up in front of Sae.

“No. Gale,” Haymitch says simply, but it still seems as though he’s dropped a bomb on me. Peeta apparently feels the same.

“Gale?” I can hear Peeta’s discomfort in that single word. Haymitch had no right to throw him into the middle of our lives again. He belongs in the past.

“Gale’s working in District 2. What can he possibly do with them?” I ask and I silently wonder why he’d want to.

“Right. You two have been ignoring everything but each other,” says Haymitch, who has apparently also picked upon my eye-rolling habit. Maybe it’s a Seam thing. I’m not sure. “It was on the news. Gale left District 2 a few weeks back. He’s been promoted again, this time to head of Paylor’s personal security team. I figured if he’s good enough for Paylor’s security, he can probably keep an eye on the Mockingjay here.”

My hand seeks out Peeta’s beside me and I give it what I hope is a reassuring squeeze. _We’ll discuss it later_ , I think. He squeezes back.

“So how many marriage proposals did she get?” teases Haymitch, tossing back the last of his latest beer.

Peeta grins. “Not as many as me.”

I feel my jaw drop as Haymitch and Sae burst out laughing.

We sit on the blanket and watch as the stars start come out. The geese are honking and fluttering their wings in their new enclosure before they settle down for the night in the straw that Haymitch put in their hut. Lily waddles around the yard, making honking noises until Sae calls her over to us. Cuddled up with her grandmother, she eventually falls asleep.

Not long after that, Haymitch starts to yawn and wanders back over to his house. Peeta lifts Lily’s sleeping form into his arms and carries her home for Sae. I take the dishes into the house and shake out the blankets. Before long, Peeta is back, stretching and rolling his shoulders. “I probably shouldn’t have done that,” he grimaces before holding out his hand to me. “Come on, we’ll take care of that in the morning,” he says and leads me upstairs.

When we get there, I start the shower in our bathroom. “Get in,” I tell him.

When he feels the temperature of the water, he is unimpressed. “You’ve caused me enough cold showers, Katniss Everdeen.”

A bubble of laughter bursts out of me. “Seriously. It’ll help. My mother says cool water is the best thing for sore muscles. When my father used to come home from the mines, she’d have an ice pack ready for his back.”

I go out to turn the bed down and when I come back into the bathroom, the water is raining down over Peeta’s neck and shoulders while he leans against the wall on his forearms, the flesh and blood version of the ancient statues that were in our history books in school. He doesn’t react when the shower door closes behind me. My arms wrap around his waist while I plant a kiss on his back, chasing one of the rivulets of water with my tongue. “Hey,” I whisper. Peeta reaches around, caressing my hip. “Want me to wash your back?”

He whips around then, crashing his lips down onto mine, backing me up against the wall. His lips are fierce, hot against my own. I welcome his demands and fist my hands in his hair while his lips blaze a trail to my jaw and down my neck. He begins to use his teeth and lips on the spot where my neck and shoulders meet and I cry out with pleasure. Hungry for his lips, I pull his face back to mine. Our eyes lock together before we both dive back into a kiss, our tongues dueling for control.

Peeta reaches behind us and turns off the water and pulls me out of the shower, tossing a thick towel to me before grabbing one for himself and drying off quickly. I am still running the terry cloth over my hair when he crouches down to lick the drops of water off the tips of my breasts, then trails his tongue over the soft slopes toward my belly where a fire is burning. My knees are turning to water, but Peeta chooses that moment to stand up, reaching for my hips to bring me with him as he rises.

I lock my legs around his waist and kiss him again. With me wrapped around him, Peeta propels us back into the bedroom where he lowers me to the edge of the bed. I run my hands over the lines of his chest and around his waist before sliding my hands down to rub them along the curve of his butt.

I decide to put last night’s learnings into practice, stroking the hard length of him, applying different degrees of pressure and differing speeds as I experiment with how to pleasure him. Peeta bites down on his lip and watches me before finally covering my hand with his to show me what he likes. He sighs as we settle into a rhythm. His head falls back and his mouth opens slightly. His breathing shallows and quickens. He raises his head and locks me in an intense gaze, his eyes hooded and glazed. He still hasn’t spoken, but I understand what he wants and that he won’t ask me for it. With my eyes on him, I lower my head and begin to pleasure him with my mouth. I hear a sharp intake of breath when my lips close over him. He groans as my mouth slides down his shaft, taking as much of him into my mouth as I can before travelling upwards, rolling my tongue over the head and journeying back down. I begin to establish a rhythm and Peeta takes my head in his hands and as he starts to thrust into my mouth, taking care not to push too far. His hips pick up speed as his excitement builds. I am taking him deeper and deeper with every pass. With one final groan, Peeta explodes and l swallow it down.

When he withdraws, he kisses me deeply and then pushes my back down on the bed. He leans over me his mouth and hands exploring all my curves and secrets. I burn with every touch and whimper as his hands and lips follow a slow and sensuous path along my body. I am limp with need when he kneels on the floor between my legs, sending tingles up my body by stroking his hands from my knees toward the apex of my thighs. He parts me with his fingers and his thumb brushes over the spot where my pulse is pounding.

I cry out, arching my hips. “Peeta, please,” I beg.

His thumb circles over my clit again and I whimper his name. He pulls my legs over his shoulders then and brings his mouth to my most intimate place. My eyes fly open and my body bucks involuntarily at this new sensation. White hot need spikes through me. His tongue swirls around my clit over and over and I am lost in a haze of passion, clutching desperately at the sheets as my back arches off the bed. My body is coiled at the edge of the cliff, ready to jump off and fly when he stops.

Confused, I open my eyes and Peeta is watching me. Passion is glowing in his blue eyes, along with some other emotion that I don’t recognize.

“Only me,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Say it, Katniss. Only me.”

“Only you,” I wrench out. “Always.”

He lowers his head then, finding just the right spot, and fireworks explode behind my eyelids as I shatter into a million pieces.

* * *

Later, under the patchwork quilt with only the lamp on the mantel holding off the darkness, Peeta asks me what I think Gale will do with the letters. I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. “I don’t know. Look into the people who sent them, I suppose. He may not do anything. Like you said, it’s probably nothing anyway.”

Peeta frowns. “I don’t know whether to be relieved or annoyed that Haymitch sent them to him.”

I knew Peeta wasn’t comfortable with Gale having the letters, but I am surprised that he’s actually saying it. I suppose it’s yet another effect of his time in Snow’s torture chamber. He’s not especially interested in pretense anymore.

“Well, I’m sure he’ll dig into it and he’ll deal with it.” Doubt must cross my face. “No, Katniss. I’m sure of it.”

“Why?”

“Because if our roles were reversed, that’s exactly what I’d do. But I would have liked to have time to think about whether or not we wanted him back in our lives.”

“I know,” I whisper. “Me too ... Peeta, I’m exactly where I want to be. You know that, right?”

He doesn’t answer. He just settles his cheek against the top of my head. I pull myself up on top of him then and force him to look at me. “You and I are meant for each other. We would have happened anyway. I need to know that you still know that.”

Peeta reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes.” He smiles softly then, his heart swimming in his eyes. I lay my head on his chest while he strokes my hair. I’m almost asleep when he asks me another question

“What was going on between you and Haymitch? Why not send the letters to Plutarch?”

“He’s a gamemaker,” I say, grateful that those three words are all the explanation I’ll ever need to provide to Peeta. We’re quiet again. “So … just how many marriage proposals did you receive?”

He just laughs and changes the subject with a kiss.


	10. Chapter 10

When I get back from the woods in the morning, Peeta is elbow-deep in a bowl of bread dough

We’ve been living under the same roof now for over a month, and the sight of him at work in the kitchen still gets to me. I hug him from behind, rising on my tiptoes to plant a kiss on the nape of his neck while my fingers sneak under his shirt and I splay my hands across his stomach.

“You always smell good. What type of bread are you making?”

“Cinnamon raisin today,” he tells me cheerfully, twisting to place a kiss on my cheek.

“I dug up some rosemary,” I tell him, taking down a mug to pour myself a cup of tea from the pot he always remembers to put on for me. “I thought we could use a little of it to make a soup with the leftover turkey and we should have enough left over to plant a pot for the kitchen window so we’ll have some when winter comes.”

I take the mug to the table to watch him work, pushing my box of stuff out of the way before I sit down. Peeta eyes the move as he wipes the flour off his hands with his apron. “I don’t want to be a nag, Katniss, but are you ever going to do something about that box? It’s always in the way when I’m working.”

I frown at it. The items in the box have been following from place to place for just over a year; from the Quell to the hospital in District 13, my mother’s apartment there and then my own, to my old house and finally here. I confess to Peeta that I just don’t know what to do with the contents.

He covers the bread and crosses the room to me, reaching for the box. “Let me help. What’s in there?”

Instinctively, I put my hands on top of it, worrying that some of the contents could bring on strong memories. He’s been doing so well, but I don’t want to trigger a flashback unnecessarily.

“Not much really, just some stuff that was shipped to me from District 13. Some of it’s from the Quell.”

He crosses his arms now, annoyed with me. “You’re protecting me again.”

“I can’t help it. It’s our thing.” I shrug as I open the box and pass him the picture of my parents.

He shakes his head. “Well, that’s an easy one. That belongs on the living room mantel, next to the one I have of my parents,” he says, and disappears with it. Next comes the spiel, which Peeta spins on his finger. “This will come in handy in the spring,” he comments. “There’s a sugar maple out back that we can tap.” He tosses it irreverently into a junk drawer.

I’m shocked. “Don’t you remember how important that was in the arena?”

It’s Peeta’s turn to shrug. Maybe Haymitch is right and I am rubbing off on him. “Sure,” he says. “We wouldn’t have survived without it, but it’s still just a spiel.” He tugs the box from my hands, questioning what else could be in there that’s got me so worried and lifts out his gold medallion that Effie had made to his specifications. He fingers it carefully in silence, tracing the Mockingjay before handing it to me. “Well, this brings back memories,” he says hoarsely.

I don’t look up. Instead, I focus on scraping my nail along the edge of the medallion, seeking its clasp and flipping it open. I can’t help myself, I have to touch Prim’s laughing face for just a moment. “I miss you,” I tell her softly before turning my attention to the picture of Gale and coming to a decision. I lift the thin sheet of plastic covering Gale’s face and slide his picture out. Peeta looks at me curiously. “I was never comfortable with his picture in your locket,” I explain. “It always felt like I was betraying you both.”

Peeta takes my chin in his hand, forcing me to meet his gaze. “I love you,” he tells me. As usual, I can’t say the words. Instead, I tell him that I don’t deserve him, which makes him frown. “I’ve already told you what I think about that. Come on, I have just the thing for that empty space.” I follow him into the studio, where he’s set up the camera and printer on a little side table near the door. “I haven’t got it all figured out yet,” he confesses, but he fusses and fiddles with it until he finally produces a tiny version of the picture he took of the two of us at the kitchen table. “Here.”

I take the little snapshot into the kitchen, and carefully trim it to fit in the locket.

I’m not sure how many pictures have been taken of Peeta and me by Capitol photographers. Hundreds for sure, maybe thousands. This picture is nothing like them. His t-shirt is miles too big for me. He’s wearing no shirt at all. My hair piled high and falling around my face. His curls are mussed from my fingers. His eyes are glowing as he grins. I am smiling shyly at the lens.

No, this is nothing like the pictures of what the inhabitants of the Capitol think young love should look like, I think as I snap the plastic protector over the picture. This is so much better. This is real.

* * *

 

A few days later, Peeta and I are sitting at the coffee table in the living room trying, unsuccessfully, to work on the memory book. He’s lined up his coloured pens, ready to ink the drawings he has yet to start, but I’m doodling in the margins of a scrap of paper.

“So how do you want to start?”

“I’m not sure. I was thinking we’d do it like the plant book, you know? A picture and story for each person we know who died.”

Peeta suggests we start with Prim, but I’m not even ready to think about her in the daylight hours yet. She’s still chasing me through my nightmares, begging me to come back safely from the Games. She knows I can do it, I’m the Mockingjay and I can have anything I want, I just need to ask for it. She always says that right before she bursts into flames. As her face melts, she screams at me, demanding to know why I didn’t insist that they keep her safe.

No, I’m definitely not ready to write about Prim.

“I was thinking we’d start at the beginning,” I tell him. “How many died that first day? Eleven?”

“Twelve,” Peeta says, twiddling his pencil between his fingers. I remember her then, the foolish girl from District 8 who lit a fire that served as a homing beacon for Peeta and the bloodthirsty Careers. From my position in the trees, their attack had sounded unnecessarily brutal, and her death was not quick enough. It was Peeta who went back to finish her off.

I look at him then. His jaw is tight. His voice is hard now. “Do you remember their names? The first tributes? We all kept to ourselves so much when we were training for the first Games. I ended her life and I didn’t even know her name.”

“Peeta, she was suffering. You did the right thing. You put her out of her misery.”

“She was bleeding out. I covered her nose and mouth with my hand. She was too weak to fight me off. She just watched me while I ...” Peeta’s hands are shaking now. His eyes are growing darker.

“Peeta.” I’m not sure what he’s seeing anymore. “Peeta. Look at me.” He shakes his head. “Look at me.” He meets my gaze, and I tell him it’s over.

“It’ll never be over. Not for me.”

When the pencil snaps in his hand, I take the pieces from him and thread our fingers together. My other hand strokes his cheek as I force his eyes to meet mine. The blue has all but disappeared. “Stay here. Stay with me. It’s over! We’re writing it down so that we will remember it’s over.” He shakes his head and I can’t tell if he’s trying to clear his head or argue with me. I lean in fast, pressing my lips to his and watch his pupils dilate and return to normal. “Peeta, don’t leave me here alone. _Stay with me_.” Peeta gives a long, drawn-out gasp for air and the sound reminds me of the day that Finnick restarted his heart. I can feel the tension leaving his body as his head drops to my shoulder.

“Always.”

* * *

 

Haymitch wanders in during supper and throws himself into a chair, clearly expecting to be fed. I fill a bowl full of turkey soup for our mentor and bring it to the table with half a mug of tea. He fills the rest of his mug with the whiskey from his flask. As he’s lifting his spoon to his mouth for his first taste of soup, he looks at me. “What’s up with him?” he asks, nodding his head at Peeta who has barely acknowledged his presence.

“Rough day. Starting the book was harder than we thought.”

Peeta is feigning interest in his soup, stirring it, but not actually eating anything. Haymitch takes a swig from his mug before gestures with it toward Peeta. “You have a flashback?”

“No.” Haymitch looks at him pointedly and waits. “Almost. Katniss brought me out of it.”

Haymitch grunts. “No more walks down memory lane without me for a few days, Sweetheart.”

I start to argue, but Peeta agrees with Haymitch. “I’ll feel safer if you’re not alone, Katniss.” Outvoted, I fall silent.

Peeta asks Haymitch how we could get the names of the other tributes from our first games.

“Effie’s going to call tonight. She’ll have them. I’ll ask her.”

I look at Peeta, wondering if he’s as surprised as I am that Haymitch is still in contact with Effie. Peeta seems to have missed it, but when I open my mouth to ask about it, he kicks me under the table and shoots me a look under his lashes.

“What do you want that names for, anyway? Who were those people to you?” Haymitch is talking about the list again.

“It just seems wrong that they died instead of us and we don’t even know who they were,” I say.

“They died because they weren’t smart enough or fast enough to get out of the way.”

“Haymitch, they were reaped just like us. We need to acknowledge them somehow.”

“What is it, a goddamn catalogue of kids sent to be slaughtered?” Haymitch snears. “Name, age, training score?”

“Haymitch,” Peeta’s voice has a warning tone to it. “You know that’s not what we’re doing.”

“If you ask me,” Haymitch says, taking another slug of tea, “You should tell it like a story. Your story.”

Haymitch’s words seem to reach Peeta for the first time since we started the project this afternoon. He goes into the living room and returns with the book and his pens. “We could start with the reaping,” he says, gradually bringing Effie Trinket to life in her ridiculous pink wig and green suit. Effie is reaching into the bowl about to pull out Prim’s name.

“Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” says Haymitch.

I grab a pen and start to write about Reaping Day in District 12, what it was like to stand there, year after year, hoping your name wouldn’t be called; feeling a strange mix of gratitude and guilt when one of your classmates was brought to the stage and you knew you wouldn’t be the one returning in a box that year. Then they called my little sister’s name, even though I’d done everything I could to prevent that from happening.

Haymitch stays with us for a while, watching us work, but he either concludes we’ll be ok for the night or he’s eager for Effie’s phone call because he eventually walks out as abruptly as he came in and never comes back. It’s possible he just passed out.

Peeta and I sit up most of the night, working on the book. The images are flowing from his pen like snapshots that have been rescued from his damaged memory bank. He draws me on the stage from his viewpoint in the crowd after I volunteer, a proud and determined look on my face as I stare out over the crowd. Another image shows our hands clasped as we shake hands before we’re ushered inside the Justice Building. His father with the bag of cookies. His first impressions of the train. Me driving the knife into the table. The two of us riding into the arena, the first time we were wreathed in fire.

I write and write. Everything I can remember goes onto the pages on the right side of the book. Peeta’s pictures follow along on the left.

At one point, we stop to take a stretch break and Peeta asks if I want to go to bed. I shake my head.

“Not tonight. I’ll have nightmares for sure. If we go to bed, you’ll have to pry me out of the closet in the morning.”

He nods in agreement. “Me too. Anyway, the memories are flowing so well. I don’t know what will happen if I stop.”

Haymitch finds us still asleep in the morning on the couch where we dropped out of sheer exhaustion just before dawn. “Were you down here all night?” He throws the list from Effie on the table, before picking up the book and flipping through about 20 finished pages. “Of course you were. You two are going to make yourselves sick if you keep pushing this hard,” he says. “It’s all about balance.”

This earns a derisive snort from Peeta, who’s thrown his forearm over his eyes to block out the sun. “Words of wisdom from our District’s shining example of balance and moderation.”

When we finally manage to pull ourselves off the couch, Peeta puts in a call to Dr. Aurelius to tell him about his episode the day before. The head doctor echoes Haymitch’s words of caution and so we try to limit the work to no more than a couple of hours per day.

We carefully log each of the tributes names including the girl from District 8, whose name, according to Effie, was Georgette. Peeta does a sketch of her and when he’s done, spends the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen baking, gripping the counter tightly when flashbacks threaten. He seems better able to hold on today and so I give him the space he seems to be looking for while I write down what I remember from the night she died. Later on, after he’s baked so many cheese buns that we have to distribute them around the village, he goes back over what I’ve written. When sees that I put down that he showed her mercy, he makes me take it out.

“Katniss, we’ve got to be honest when we write this. I helped them hunt her and stood by while they attacked her. Then I went back and finished the job. I was no hero in there.”

“You were to me.”

He shakes his head. I feel anger building in my belly. I want to scream that any normal measure of decency did not apply in the arena, but the risk that I will push an already emotional Peeta over the edge, sends me storming out the back door and over to Haymitch’s house.

I slam his kitchen door behind me, and all of my frustrations come roaring out. Haymitch careens around the corner with his knife in his fist, ready to slice his intruder to ribbons. His eyes are wild when they hone in on me. Fear flashes through me. He’s across the tiles in an instant, the knife level with my throat. He’s breathing heavily in my face and the stench of whatever hooch he’s consumed so far today is overpowering. I am contemplating how quickly I can smash the empty wine bottle on the table as a weapon when the urge to kill leaves his face. Instead, he’s just angry.

“Don’t you ever, _ever_ do that again. I am damn good with this knife, Sweetheart. You’re just lucky I decided to look before I threw it.”

I feign indifference, stepping back and throwing myself into one of his only two remaining kitchen chairs where I slouch with my boots kicked out in front of me. “I need a drink. You got a clean glass around here?”

Haymitch gets a bottle down of white liquor down and slaps a glass against the table. “The last time we got drunk together, the Boy was none too happy with either of us.”

“Well, if he’s going to judge me, it might as well be about something I can change. Pour.”

Haymitch pours two fingers into my glass, keeping the bottle for himself. “Trouble in paradise, then.” When my head flicks up, he grins. “I figured that might be why you’re sulking over here rather than canoodling with him over there.”

“I’m not sulking.” Haymitch cackles at that. I throw back about half the foul-tasting liquid in the glass. It burns all the way down before settling in my gut and matching my mood. Then tell him about Peeta’s insistence that he is a horrible person because of the girl in District 8.

“Sweetheart, no one is a victor by chance, not even Peeta. It doesn’t work that way. If you walked out of there alive, you’re lethal. That’s all there is to it.”

“Peeta’s hardly a ruthless killer, Haymitch. He put a dying girl out of her misery. He collected some poisonous berries that got stolen.”

I pour the rest of my glass down my throat, but this time doesn’t have much taste at all. The liquor has either burned off my taste buds or it’s starting to have an effect.

“Slow down. You’re going to make yourself sick.” Haymitch takes a long swig from the bottle and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. I push my empty glass towards him and Haymitch pours me a little more. “He threw Cato to the mutts. He killed Brutus in a rage during the Quell. He did what he had to do to survive, just like we both did. He’s a better person than either of us, but that doesn’t change anything. In fact, it probably makes it worse.”

He salutes me with his bottle and I hold up my glass. We both swig at the same time.

“If he’s this hard on himself, I wonder what he thinks about what I did.”

“And now we’ve come to what’s really bothering you. I told you that book would drive you crazy if you’re not careful. Go home, Sweetheart. He’s probably worrying. Tell him you’re sorry and put the project away for a few days.”

* * *

 

I stumble over the threshold on my way into the kitchen. My feet and my brain don’t seem to be moving at the same speed, but I make my way into the living room. Peeta is sitting on the couch, looking at the floor with his elbows on his knees. His hands are clenched together. He looks up, the relief evident on his face as I cross the room to him and plop down beside him. I lean over to drop my head onto his shoulder and he sits up and puts his arm around me. We fall back against the couch.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come back,” he says into my hair.                                                                                                                                    

I sigh. It sounds dramatic, even though I don’t mean it to be. “I think you’re stuck with me. I hope you’re OK with that.” He doesn’t say anything to that, but he kisses the top of my head and I take that as a yes. “Haymitch said I need to come home and apologize.”

He chuckles. “I figured that’s where you’d been when you staggered in here.”

“Yeah … Sorry.”

“About going to Haymitch’s? I think we’ll both be sorry you did that later.”

I shake my head, but that makes the room spin and jumbles my thoughts. “Yeah, but I’m sorry that I upset you earlier.”

“You didn’t upset me. What I’ve done upsets me. I’m not a hero, Katniss.”

I sit up so I can look into those bright blue eyes that have come to mean so much to me. It’s important that he sees the truth in my face. “I meant what I said. You are to me.” My voice is fierce. “It makes me so mad that you can’t see that. You save me over and over and I only think of myself.” Angry tears boil up and I swipe them away.

“That’s not true. You saved all of Panem, Katniss. You put yourself on the line for us all. ”

“If that’s true, why do I lose everyone I love?”

He frowns then and pulls me to him. “You won’t lose me. I’ve loved you my whole life. You’re stuck with me. I hope you’re OK with that.”

I snicker. “I’ll allow it.”

He leans in and the last thing I see before my eyes flutter closed and our lips meet, is a crooked grin on his face.


	11. Chapter 11

I’ve never had the chance to lie on the beach in District 4, but I have always imagined it feeling a lot like this. With my eyes closed, I turn my face up to the late summer sun, drawing its warmth into my skin as I stretch out on the blanket after our time in the lake.

My eyes open into another pair that are as blue as the sky behind him. His hair is damp and spiky from the lake as he brings his lips to mine.

“Hi.” I whisper, not wanting to disturb the peace I always find here by the water where, if you are still enough, you can lull yourself to sleep by listening to the waves lap against the shore while the mockingjays sing the songs they’ve learned on the breeze.

I feel the heat of Peeta’s breath against the cool of the still-damp skin on my neck. “You’re so beautiful.” He whispers this like a prayer against my ear as his lips move down my neck to my collarbone where he sucks gently before making his way back up my neck to my ear again. He nips my earlobe playfully. “Let me sketch you. The light is perfect. I want – I need – to sketch you. Please.”

My modesty and embarrassment over my scars rises to the surface. As comfortable as I’m becoming with my current state of undress in front of Peeta, I’m not sure I want it recorded on paper. Then again, this is Peeta. I trust him above all others, and he asks for so little.

My decision must show on my face, because before I even have a chance to nod, Peeta grins and plants a smacking kiss on my lips, diving for his sketch pad in our backpack. When he turns his attention back to me, he’s wearing a familiar look of concentration. There’s a heat behind it today that I’m starting to know more intimately, but the artist in him is keeping that carefully banked.

He asks me to roll me onto my side, before helping me to bend my upper leg toward my body so that it supports my weight and provides me with a little cover. I use one hand as a pillow while the other lies on the blanket. He gently arranges the strands of my still-damp hair around me, then caresses my jaw with his thumb before sitting back on his heels and giving me a satisfied nod.

“So now what?”

“Just look at me,” he says, smiling contentedly as he settles in to sketch, moving his pencil across the page in what I guess are long lines. He looks up at me again and chuckles, “And don’t scowl.”

I lay there in the late summer sun, watching him work. His pencil is flying across the page and while I can feel his eyes on me, I’m not sure that he’s actually seeing me. At the moment, I am just shape and form that he’s trying to recreate.

“You know, I thought we were working on being normal. This doesn’t feel normal.”

He turns his attention back to me. “When you’re an artist, sketching a beautiful woman is very normal.”

I make a face at the idea that I’m beautiful. Then I realize what he just said.

“Peeta, just how many girls have you drawn like this?”

He chuckles behind the sketch pad. “I don’t sketch and tell, Katniss.”

“Peeta!” Shocked by the idea that Delly or Madge or some other merchant girl might have posed for him like this, I break the pose and sit straight up. Peeta sighs, tossing the book and pencil aside to come back to me.

“Come on, Katniss. I’m memory impaired. How am I supposed to remember how many?” I punch him in the shoulder. “Ow. Hey, OK. OK. I’m teasing. None. Well, one. Over and over.” I scowl. He tilts my chin toward him and kisses the end of my nose. “Just you, Katniss. It’s only ever been you.”

“Peeta. I’ve never posed for you before.”

He blushes and tries to change the subject as he poses me again. “I sort of like you jealous. You’ve never been jealous over me before. It’s cute.”

I scowl.

“I said don’t scowl. Is anyone or anything trying to kill us?”

“No.”

“Hurt us in anyway? Force us to get married, chase us with cameras, wax our entire bodies or cover us in glitter?”

“No,” I laugh.

“Then, hello… normal. Just relax.”

I scowl on purpose this time and stick out my tongue, but he’s already turned his back to me and is settling down with his sketch pad.

Peeta’s quest for living as normally as we can is what brought us back to the lake today. When the baking and hunting are done, we try to spend a couple of hours working on the book. We’re making progress, but we haven’t forgotten what can happen if we push ourselves too hard. We’ve written about the careers chasing me up a tree and the trackerjacker nest. Peeta held me for what seemed like hours while I cried over Rue.

Working through our time in the cave was excruciating. The Capitol had hours of footage of the two of us there and Peeta says they used it almost every day when they hijacked him. We played “real or not real” off and on for days as we reconstructed his memory. I even consented to turning on the TV so that we could watch that part of our first Games together with Haymitch and talk it through. When we were done, Peeta locked himself in his studio for the rest of the day, not coming out until long after I’d finally given up waiting for him and gone to bed. The bed felt cold and empty without him, and it wasn’t until I felt his arms snake around me tentatively, hours later, that I could finally relax and drift off to sleep. In the morning, I noticed new canvasses added to the stack that faces the wall in the corner of his studio.

Those are the bad days when coping with what has happened to us is almost more than we can manage. We’re also having good days, when we put the book away and spend our day trying to build a normal life together. Peeta takes pictures of me in the woods, pictures of me having tea over breakfast, pictures of the two of us on the couch. Sometimes I co-operate and smile. Sometimes I don’t. He doesn’t seem to care.

I brought my mother’s rocking chair over to our house and placed it by the fireplace in our room. We ordered paint the colour of sunset for the kitchen. My winter clothes got hauled across the courtyard and hung in the closets. Peeta made a grumbling Haymitch help move the wardrobe of Cinna’s clothes down into our basement.

Most of our good afternoons are spent just enjoying our time together. Peeta says we’re dating, but that’s not something I’ve ever cared about before and it seems kind of silly to call it that when we’re sharing the same bed at night.

We spent one sunny afternoon among dandelions that are growing in the tall grass of neglected courtyard of the Victor’s Village, where I lay with my head in Peeta’s lap, weaving a crown of flowers while he worked on a sketch. My heart clutched when he told me that he wanted to freeze the moment and live in it forever, but I said nothing. I just waited with a smile on my face until, like the day with the plant book, his eyes went wide with the realization that he’d said that to me before, on the roof of the Training Centre.

“We did have a first date,” he said, his voice full of wonder. The next thing I knew, a very giddy Peeta was laughing and pulling me into his lap, squeezing me so tightly that I could hardly breathe. A shiver of excitement coursed through his body, brought on by the recovery of another natural, positive memory of the two of us together. When the tremor passed, he framed my face in his hands and touched our foreheads together. “It’s so hard, Katniss, to know that I loved you – and to love you all over again – to know it without being able to truly remember so much of what happened and what you meant to me.”

“But Peeta, you do remember.” He shook his head and looked down, but I forced him to look at me, locking his eyes with mine. “The real moments – the best ones -- the times when whatever was happening between us was just about you and me and not about trying to please the Capitol or trying to survive, those are the moments you remember.” He brought his lips to my forehead, my cheeks before finally settling on my lips. Instinctively, my hands skimmed up his chest before fisting in his hair. With my body weight, I push Peeta back against the blanket, lost in the now familiar and oh-so-welcome heat building between us.

I felt Peeta freeze before my usually alert senses signaled the presence of something behind me. I looked over my shoulder. Haymitch again, with a pained look on his face.

“Do you mind, Haymitch? We’re kind of having a moment here.” Peeta’s reaction to the interruption skipped over embarrassed and went straight to annoyed, which probably had as much to do with the soaking we got the other night when Haymitch turned the hose on us after we got carried away while stargazing in the backyard as it did with his presence now.

“Look, I don’t care what you two do in the privacy of your house. Truly, I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I want to watch it every time I turn around. And if you think the news that you two make out in the middle of the village won’t spread to 13 and then to the Capitol then you’re even dumber than I thought. Plutarch will have cameras on your doorstep and on mine – which, incidentally, is what’s really pissing me off here – 10 seconds after he hears the news. So spare us all a little drama, will you?” Haymitch stomped off, but we weren’t long picking up our blanket and Peeta’s sketch pad and heading into the house.

Since then, we’ve been trying to be more discreet. We go for long walks in the woods or spend afternoons here at the lake with a picnic and a blanket. We take the camera everywhere we go. It doesn’t really matter where we are or what we do, nothing seems to ease the way I crave his hands on me, or the clawing emptiness I feel when he pulls away.

Our first explorations were all about heat and discovery. Now he painstakingly lavishes my body with the same careful, practiced attention that he brings to a painting on his easel. I love the way his hands skim over my body as he watches under heavy-lidded eyes for my reaction. He found a spot on my neck that makes me arch my back when he brings his lips to it. When his hand slides between my legs, he works magic with his fingers until I fall apart. But no matter how many times I try to hint that I am OK with taking that next step, it doesn’t seem to be the signal that Peeta is looking for.

I still wake from nightmares sometimes. Other times, I wake wet between my legs and my body thrumming with need for him. Last night, I dreamed we baked chocolate cake in our underwear and when he offered me a bit of batter on his finger to taste it, we got distracted and started finding new and interesting places from which to sample it.

“What are you thinking about?” He’s looking up from his sketch pad again.

“You.”

I watch his eyebrows quirk up, followed by a sly grin. “Really? Well that explains the look.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, puzzled.

He puts the sketch pad down, running his hand along my upper leg and over my hip before settling at my waist.

“You’ve got this look in your eye. It’s driving me crazy,” he says, and there’s a rasp to his voice that makes me want to thread my fingers through his hair and yank him down to me. I make up my mind before I even realize I had a question I was trying to answer.

“I think we should go home.”

“Ok, well, let me just finish up this last bit,” he says, moving back towards his drawings.

I take a deep breath and try, again, to tell him what I want. “Peeta.” He looks over his shoulder at me, and his eyes meet mine. “Please. Take me home.” He drags his teeth over his lower lip as understanding dawns upon his handsome features.

“Oh! I, uh … Just let me …” He starts throwing things into the back pack, sending nervous glances my way. The fact that I’ve left the usually eloquent Peeta Mellark at a loss for words makes me grin.

We dress quickly and start walking back home. My heart is pounding in my ears. Peeta keeps bringing our clasped hands to his lips, finally using the gesture to tug me toward him. He catches me in his arms and then takes my lower lip between his own. When my mouth parts, I hear him whisper my name before sliding his tongue against mine. He backs me up until I’m pinned between him and trunk of a big maple. When I open my eyes, he is studying my face intently. He seems to find his answer, because he nods and takes my hand, leading me home.

It’s me who stops us when we come out of the woods behind my old house, wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him deeply. His hands find my hips and he closes the remaining distance between us, until I can feel his erection hard against my belly. He takes my face in his hands and brings his lips to my forehead. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He takes my hand again, this time walking at a little slower pace, but when we round the corner, Thom Applewood is waiting on the front porch of our house. We dart back out of sight.

Peeta beats his head softly against the wall of the house. “Fuck.”

I snicker. Peeta only curses when he’s really wound up. “What are we going to do? My key for this place is in our house, so we can’t even sneak in here.”

We rest our heads on each other’s shoulders for a few minutes, waiting until we have enough control to politely send Thom off with today’s baking, but the grim look we see on his face as we get closer changes all of that. Peeta takes in the situation quickly gives my hand an apologetic squeeze.

“Long day, Thom?” Peeta asks as we let him into the house.

Thom nods. “The work in the Seam is done. More construction crews will start arriving next week to put up multi-unit buildings,” he says. This should be cause for celebration for Thom after all the work that he’s put in, but something is clearly weighing on his mind.

“It didn’t take as long as I thought to knock down all those houses in the Seam,” I observe.

“There wasn’t much left, Katniss. It was pretty much flattened in the bombing,” Thom says. “It was sad just the same, though,” he sighs. “I watched them tear what was left of my old house down in about two minutes. All those memories,” he shakes his head. “At least the Seam houses were mostly empty.” He looks at Peeta then and understanding dawns. The merchant families would never have listened to Gale and Thom’s panicked knocking that night.

Peeta’s jaw tightens as he packs up today’s order. “When?” he asks.

“We’re going building by building, room by room. We’re starting in the square, so I thought we could do the bakery tomorrow if you want to.”

“I’ll be there.”

Thom agrees and Peeta walks him to the door. I follow them down the hall and wait in the living room. When Peeta comes in to find me, I hold out my arms and he steps into them, our plans for the rest of the day forgotten. There is only room for comfort now.

“They might be still in there, Katniss,” he chokes out. I say nothing. “They might be still in there. I’ve been up here for months, thinking they were probably already in that grave in the meadow and…”

I step back and grab him by the arms. “Peeta, you didn’t know. You couldn’t possibly have known. Thom’s been here every day and he didn’t say a word.”

“I should have gone down there sooner.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference. Any of the buildings that are still standing have been condemned. They aren’t safe to walk through unless you know what you’re doing.” He pushes away from me and sits on the couch with his head in his hands. I sit beside him and rub slow, soothing circles into his back. “Peeta, listen to me. If they didn’t get out when Gale, Thom and the others sounded the alarm, they didn’t suffer. Gale said they told as many people as they could and then he led them out into the woods. The bombs dropped and the fire burned all night long.”

“But still, Katniss, their bodies have been down there all this time.”

“Maybe. We don’t know that for sure. And there was nothing you could have done about it until now. Tomorrow, we’ll know.”


	12. Chapter 12

Each night since I’ve moved in, I sleep cocooned in Peeta’s arms. Sometimes we start the night with my head on his chest, but we almost always end up spooned on our left sides toward the open window that looks into my old bedroom on the other side of the courtyard. I don’t even mind his soft snoring in my ear. It grounds me somehow, reminding me when I wake up feeling safe, warm and about as happy as is possible for me, that I am exactly where I want to be.

It was probably the absence of his snoring that woke me up just before dawn. When I opened my eyes, Peeta was curled up in a tight ball. His entire body was shaking and he covered his head like a child trying to protect himself. “No more, please,” he whispered.

I take him into my arms, running my fingers through his hair, trying desperately to soothe him back to sleep. “Shhh. Not real,” I whisper in his ear. “Not real. You’re safe.” My hand rubs along his arm and then back up into his hair, tucking a stray tendril behind his ear. “Not real,” I tell him again, before I start the process all over again, trying to comfort him while still keeping a promise I made to allow him to wake on his own.

A few days ago, while we were working through the cave memories, Peeta had an especially vivid nightmare. Apparently the Capitol had woven together his memories of the nightlock berries with the sleep syrup-laced berries I fed him before the feast. When I shook him awake, he dropped from his dream into a full-blown flashback; his pupils dilated until almost no blue remained. He’d only managed to tell me to run, before it overtook him. I fled, barely feeling the chill of the cold under my feet as he began to scream and thrash behind me. When Peeta came back to himself hours later, he found me curled up amongst Cinna’s dresses in the basement wardrobe. He’d scooped me up in his arms and brought me back to bed where he’d held me until I finally relaxed. Then he knelt by the bed and told me in the tone he uses when he wants me to know there will be no argument that he would be sleeping across the hall from now on. That night, he’d determinedly tucked me into bed and went into the next room, locking the door behind him. Three hours later, I woke up screaming and once he finally calmed me down, I begged him to stay with me.

In the morning, we agreed that he would come back to our bed, but I would never force him awake again, no matter how bad it was. So, now I am soothing and singing to Peeta, running my fingers through his hair and kissing his neck, hoping he will soon regain consciousness on his own because it tears me up inside to watch him suffer and not be able to stop it. When he finally wakes, he immediately wraps himself around me, burying his face in my neck. I continue to whisper that whatever he saw wasn’t real. That he is safe. That we are together. Always.

“Were you in the lab?” I feel his head shake. “In your cell?” Again, negative. “Was it shiny?”

“No.” His voice is hoarse, but he’s found it again. “No. It was a memory. My mother.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. She was on my mind when we went to bed, obviously. They all were. I think it just brought it to the surface.”

He rolls then, until we’re curled together in the position we like best, watching the sky turn from black to muted grey as the sun begins to rise behind our house. He pulls me in tighter to him, kisses my neck just below my ear and begins to tell me about his family. His gentle father, so proud of the legacy of their bakery that went back generations. “Even before the dark days, there was a Mellark’s in our district,” Peeta tells me, as he describes the ancient recipe book that his father kept in the safe. Serious, responsible Bran was about to get married and get out of the apartment over the bakery. Rye liked to bake the cookies. “They’re quick to make, which suited his attention span. He said they were sweet and fun like him,” Peeta recounts, with a hitch in his voice before burying his face in my neck for a few minutes. “We all took our lumps, Katniss, and they did their best to protect me, but she was a hard woman to live with.”

I remember that day in the rain and the bruises on his face the next day. The first time he’d taken a beating so that I could live. My boy with the bread who has been through so much. The guilt threatens to swallow me. I force it down. He needs me now. I cannot give him the words he craves, but I can give him compassion and gentleness in the misty morning light.

“Why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t your father stop it?”

“I don’t know why Dad didn’t deal with it. I’ll never understand that. It got better once we started to wrestle. She finally understood we could hurt her if she pushed us far enough. But even though the physical stuff stopped, she was never completely happy with anything we did, especially me.”

I hate her. I hate her, but I say nothing because it will only hurt him more. He deserved a mother who cherished him, who believed in him. I reach behind me and comb my fingers into his hair, tracing little circles onto his scalp.

“I think Dad and the boys expected to move in here, after our first Games,” he confesses. “But I just packed my boxes and moved up the hill. I wasn’t sure of myself around her anymore. She never said a word. She just looked at me like she knew what I was capable of now. Knew there was just enough of her in me that I could, and would, show her what it means to be a Victor if she pushed me.”

I roll over and take his face in my hands. His jaw is tight and his eyes are glassy. I force him to look at me. “You are nothing like her,” I say fiercely. “Nothing. Do you hear me? You have never harmed anyone or anything except to save your life or mine.”

“Katniss, how can you say that? I tried to kill you.” He tries to push me away and roll over, but for once, I’m faster and I manage to straddle his hips and plant my hands on the mattress on either side of his head.

“You were poisoned, Peeta. Poisoned and brainwashed and terrified. That had nothing to do with her. Nothing to do with the real you.”

Peeta smiles sadly. He reaches up and brushes his knuckles where his fingers once wrapped around my neck. I take his hand in mine and kiss his fingertips one by one. Then I slide down until my head rests on his chest and he rubs my back while we wait for the sun to rise.

* * *

 

“You’re not going with me,” he says for the tenth time.

“I’m not letting you face that alone,” I say for the eleventh as I move around the kitchen, cleaning up the remains of breakfast.

Peeta sucks air through his teeth and tugs at his hair as he scowls down into his tea. “Katniss. I won’t be alone. Thom will go with me. I don’t know what will happen when I see the bakery the first time.”

He thinks he’s likely to have a flashback. He probably will. “Exactly. That’s why I need to be there. Maybe if we’re together…”

“Katniss!” Peeta’s fist pounds against the table and my gaze snaps from the pan of dirty dishes to him. He so rarely lets go of his temper. “I won’t let you put yourself in danger for my sake. I won’t have it.”

“Peeta, you won’t hurt me.”

“Tell that to the Katniss I found in the wardrobe the other morning.”

“Peeta, you’d just had a nightmare. You weren’t even totally awake. This is completely different.”

“Katniss, no!”

I prepare myself to try to reason with him again, when I hear a lazy sneer at the kitchen door. “Fighting’s just another form of foreplay, you know.”

We both speak at once.

“Haymitch, tell her it’s not safe to go down to the Village with me this morning.”

“Haymitch, tell him he shouldn’t go down there without me this morning.”

Our mentor says nothing. He just snatches the last piece of cold toast from the plate in the middle of the table and plunks into the chair next to Peeta. He chews thoughtfully while we watch.

“You’re both right,” he says. “So I’ll go too. Just let me go home and feed the geese. Don’t leave without me.” He shuffles back out the door. I doubt if the geese got enough for breakfast because he isn’t gone long. When Thom arrives at the agreed upon time, the three of us are waiting on the front step. We start walking into town, not saying much of anything. Peeta’s hand is squeezing mine tightly. We will face this like we face everything. Together.

Peeta spends the entire journey town craning his neck in every direction. Like the Victor’s Village, the train station looks much pretty much as it did when we left for the Quell two years ago. The ash has finally settled and the roads are clear of the bodies that used to riddle them.

Nothing else is normal. The endless sprawl of ramshackle homes that belonged to the families who lived in the Seam is gone. Every place I knew in my childhood has been knocked down and hauled away. The meadow is an open scar in the earth. The merchant quarter, however, hasn’t changed much since Coin sent me here to convince me to be the Mockingjay. The shallow pile of refuse around the town square remains. Thom leads the way as we walk past the blackened rubble that used to be the Justice Building. Haymitch is travelling behind us, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat, one probably wrapped around his flask. I can feel him watching us both carefully. I am watching Peeta, whose hand is still clutching mine as we approach the bakery.

Very little is left of the wooden building that was Peeta’s childhood home. The back wall is still standing and what is left of the roof has collapsed on top of a melted lump that used to be the oven. I keep waiting for Peeta to speak, to gasp, to weep, to… something. That’s what the old Peeta would have done. The one who hadn’t been through two horrific Hunger Games and survived Snow’s torture chamber. This Peeta hasn’t said a word since we left the house.

Haymitch’s hand falls hard against his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Boy.”

Peeta nods and swallows, but doesn’t speak to him. Instead, he turns to Thom. “I need to know if they’re still in there.”

Thom nods. “I thought you might. It will take time to sift through it.”

“That’s why we’re here.”

Thom gives the signal and the work crew descends on the bakery, methodically hauling away the larger pieces and carefully sifting through piles of smaller debris and ash. Peeta’s face is still impassive, detached as he watches them.

I sigh and lean my head against his shoulder. “You OK?”

He nods. “I’ve seen this before. Real or not real?”

“I don’t think so, Peeta. You haven’t been down here before.”

“I think, after I warned you about the bombing in 13, I think they showed me video of the bombs here, the fire.” His voice is flat, expressionless. I notice that Haymitch is taking note of the tone as well. “This was my fault,” Peeta mutters.

I can’t stand listening to him blame himself. I take him by the shoulders and shake him slightly. “No. Peeta, listen to me. I saw it. I saw what Snow did. I clawed my way over the bodies to get to the Village.”

I hear a hiss from Haymitch as Peeta’s eyes snap to mine. They have taken on a cautious gaze, as though he has one foot back in the shadowy world where he was trapped after the hijacking.

“You were here.”

“Yes. After. They brought me back to see it, to convince me to be the Mockingjay. No one told you?” He shakes his head. “Peeta, when I woke up in the hospital in District 13, District 12 was already gone.”

“The bombing was my fault,” he says, agitated. “I did it. It was my punishment for warning you.”

“Not real,” I say, panicking. Peeta is fading fast. “We’ve told you this before, Peeta. Please remember. Snow did this to punish the rebels, like he did to 13.”

Peeta begins to pace and mutter. Almost all the blue is gone from his eyes. “I pushed the button. I murdered my family.”

“Not real, Peeta,” I tell him. “It happened the night the arena fell. Snow gave the order. He did that.”

He whips around to face me. “You did it. You shut down the arena. It’s your fault. You mutt! This is all your fault!” Peeta screams and lunges for me. I am frozen in place. He’s right. It is my fault and I think that maybe now I’ll finally get what I deserve. But I don’t.

Thom steps into his path and grabs him around his shoulders. Peeta is thrashing and kicking, but months of military service and construction have made Thom even stronger than he was when he worked in the mines with Gale. Haymitch approaches with an injector in his fist. He pushes Peeta’s head to the side and jams it into his neck. Peeta crumples to the ground, out cold.

Wordlessly, Haymitch picks him up and throws him over his shoulder. He looks over to Thom. “Get the guys to build a pine box and put whatever you find in it. Maybe keep it in the last empty house for now, yeah?”

Thom nods. “Will do. For Peeta.” We understand what he means. The rest of the remains of the merchant families will go to the meadow. They have no one left to mourn them.

Haymitch starts to trudge toward the Village. “C’mon Sweetheart. Let’s take our boy home.”


	13. Chapter 13

I want to find a closet so badly I can barely stand it. I’d crawl into our bed and stay there, but Peeta is in it. He’s been asleep for hours, thanks to that needle of Haymitch’s -- a massive dose of morphling straight into his jugular vein, or so our mentor told me before he dumped Peeta onto the bed and went home to get drunk.

It was left to me to remove his shoes and tuck him into bed. I’ve been sitting in my rocking chair by the bedroom fireplace ever since, waiting for Peeta to wake up. I won’t allow him to open his eyes and think he’s alone or that he’s scared me away, not after the day he’s had and how hard he’s fought to get his life back.

The sun is starting to set, bathing our room in a warm glow, when he finally begins to stir. His eyes open and stare out the window as the sky behind my old house turns his favourite colour. The sun dips below the horizon and the sky fades to violet before I finally get out of my chair and perch on the side of the bed. I reach out to sweep a lock of hair off of his forehead and he rolls away.

“You should have let Gale shoot me.”

My heart clutches. “No. I would never have let that happen. Never.”

“It would be better. You would be free of me.” I’ve only heard this hopelessness in Peeta’s voice once before, the night he had a flashback in my kitchen.

“Peeta.” I try to breathe through the panic that is clawing its way out of my chest. “I need you.”

“Katniss, we tried OK? It’s no good. I’m no good. I’m too dangerous. I won’t be responsible for hurting you again. I think you should just move back to your place.”

I’m silent for a moment as an overwhelming rage roils through me. How dare he? How dare he root himself into my heart, with his kindness and his compassion? His arms at night. His goddamn bread. I wasn’t looking for love or the hurt that inevitably goes with it. In fact, I made it pretty clear that I didn’t want any part of it. But would Peeta Mellark give up? Oh no. And now he thinks he send me back across the courtyard, to that graveyard of a house so I can live out my nightmares for the rest of my lonely and pathetic life while he sits in our home and wishes that I’d just killed him?

I tighten my hold on the reins of my temper as it tries to break free. “And Haymitch was worried about me hurting you,” I mutter.

That gets his attention. He flips to his back and stares at me, puzzled. There are black circles beneath his red-rimmed eyes. “What?”

“Haymitch. After you got back in the spring. He told me to be sure of what I wanted, because I could hurt you beyond repair if I changed my mind,” I snort derisively. “Neither one of us even considered the possibility that I’d be the one who got hurt.”

Peeta takes my wrists in his hands. “Katniss, I am thinking of you. I could kill you with my bare hands someday.”

“You won’t!”

“I almost did today!”

“No. No. That’s not what happened. You made sure we had help because you knew today was going to be a bad day. But this, sending me away?” I pause for a second, struggling against the tears that are threatening to spill over. “They should have let you strangle me in the square, Peeta,” I choke out. “It would have been kinder.”

“Katniss, you don’t understand.”

“Peeta, don’t you understand? There is no me without you anymore. When you were gone… When I thought you were…” I falter, at a loss for words. “You’re the best part of me, Peeta. Can’t you see that?”

Peeta closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before sliding over in the bed and holding out his arms to me. I crawl up beside him, and lay my head over his pounding heart. “I’m so tired, Katniss.”

“I know. You’ve said that before.”

He chuckles. “Real.” We’re both quiet for a minute, and then he sighs. “We’re such a mess.”

“Real.” I draw a heart on his stomach with my finger. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I had two arrows that day.”

Peeta lifts my hand and threads his fingers through mine. “Can I ask you a question? About that day?”

I raise up on my elbow and look down at him. “What?” Peeta’s jaw is tight, his eyes focused on our fingers. His thumb strokes back and forth across my knuckles. “Peeta, what is it?”

“Snow was so evil, Katniss. Why didn’t you shoot him?” He finally looks at me. I can see in his face that he knows it’s a loaded question. He wants to know why so many people died in the effort to kill Snow, but I didn’t take him out when given the opportunity. He wants to know why I didn’t kill his tormenter.

It dawns on me then, that no one knows the whole truth of what happened. I lift myself up on my elbow and look down into his

“Snow was already dead, Peeta.” I can see the confusion on his face. “I saw him, Peeta. I talked to him, just days before the execution.”

“What? How? I thought he was in custody.”

I slide up so that my back is against the headboard and Peeta rolls over to his side to face me. “He was, in his suite in the Presidential mansion. I was wandering the halls one day and found his living quarters. Paylor let me in. He was in there. His skin was almost green, from the poison in his system.”

“Poison? Coin poisoned him?”

“No, he poisoned himself as he was poisoning his rivals. It was to keep suspicion off him. Finnick knew all about it. He explained it in a propos that aired the night the rebels pulled you out of the training centre.” Peeta looks at me, clearly puzzled by how Finnick could know all this. I wave my hand. “It’s a long story, but you should hear it from Finnick. Haymitch can probably get us the footage. Anyway, Snow’s mouth was full of sores and blood all the time. He used his roses to cover up the smell. I think Coin must have denied him access to whatever medicines he was using to keep himself alive. She’d like that, knowing she was responsible for his death even if I was the one to pull the trigger. Snow would die at her hands and Plutarch still got his show.”

Peeta fluffs the pillows and uses them to prop himself up against the headboard beside me. “I don’t know if it was the hijacking or not, but I never trusted her.”

“I didn’t either.” I lace my fingers back through his again and give them a squeeze. “Her or Plutarch to be honest.”

“She was afraid of you. You were a threat. We both know that’s why I was sent into combat.”

But Peeta was stronger than she thought, and so she took a page out of Snow’s book and decided to break what was left of me.

“What do you remember about the fire?” I ask Peeta, laying my head against his shoulder.

“You were almost to the palace. I was trying to keep you in my sights. Something was telling me that we needed to stay together and I could tell it came from some place real. So I followed you. I figured I would protect you if I could, and if not, I’d find a way to draw them off you and on to me.” I shake my head and open my mouth to tell Peeta the thousand reasons why that was a bad idea, but he stops me with a finger over my lips. “Don’t,” he says, and wraps his other arm around my shoulder. I wriggle closer to him. “It’s what we do, Katniss.” He heaves a sigh. “Anyway, I saw you up on the flagpole and I was getting ready to create a distraction, do something to draw them onto me before they noticed you. Then the hovercraft flew overhead and the parachutes fell. All those children…” his voice catches in his throat. “Well, of course, then I realized that no one was watching you anymore. The peacekeepers and the rebel medics were running into the compound. I heard you scream Prim’s name and then I lost sight of you for a minute.”

“I jumped off the flagpole,” I tell him. He looks at me at shakes his head. I can tell what he’s thinking. _Of course you did._

“You were almost to Prim when I caught up with you. Then the bombs went off again. You were on fire and so I grabbed you.” There is a hitch in Peeta’s breath when he pulls me closer to him. He buries his lips in my hair and plows on. “I carried you over to the fountain and jumped in.” He saved me. Again. The voice calling me back from the brink of death had been his. “Your heart had stopped when I pulled you out. So I just kept working to restart it until what was left of Prim’s medic team found us.”

Oh Peeta, just when I think I can’t deserve you any less than I do, when I think I can’t fall any farther in love with you; you manage to tip the scales just a little bit more and I slide even deeper. I look up at him and his blue eyes are shining with tears that he’s not allowing to spill over. I kiss one cheek and then the other, before pressing my lips into his.

“That day, when I saw Snow, he told me that he didn’t drop those parachutes.”

Peeta looks at me, astonished. “But Katniss, I saw the Capitol insignia on the hovercraft with my own eyes.”

“He said that we both knew he had no qualms about killing children, but there was no point in him killing those kids in front of the mansion. He said that if he’d had a working hovercraft, he would have been on it.”

Peeta thinks about this while he strokes my back. “He said Coin did it.”

“Yes.”

“You think he was telling the truth.”

“I do.”

He leans back to look me in the eyes again. “You’re certain of it.”

“When Gale arrived in District 13, he and Beetee started designing bombs based on Gale’s hunting strategies, including one that maimed the victim with a delayed explosion that killed the rescuers as well.” Peeta is horrified. “I reacted the same way,” I tell him. “I said there had to be limits.”

“Gale’s bomb killed your sister.”

I rush to tell Peeta that Gale and Beetee didn’t know that their hypothetical plan had actually been put into action. “It was all a set-up, Peeta. She sent you to the Capitol to kill me, and when that didn’t work, she sent my 14-year-old sister to the frontlines where she knew I’d be. Then she used my best friend’s bomb to kill innocent children and my sister in a single blow, right in front of my eyes.”

Peeta pulls me close again and returns to stroking my back. “She wanted you isolated. She wanted to break you so that you couldn’t come between her and her plans. Katniss, why didn’t you tell someone?”

“I tried to tell Haymitch, but…”

“But he said something snide and wouldn’t listen.” I can hear the frown in Peeta’s voice. “Katniss, have you ever told anyone this story?”

I shake my head against his chest and as I do, the burden around my heart begins to ease and the my body shakes as the dam breaks inside me and my pent-up emotions release. I’ve held this in for so long. When I start to sob, Peeta pulls me up into his lap and begins to shush me and whisper that it’s over.

When I finally stop crying, he tells me that I did the right thing. Coin and Snow are both dead and we are better off for it. Our country is finally free. We have a chance to build a new and better future. Then I tell him that there’s no way Coin was creative enough to concoct the plan on her own. That the entire scene was a master work of scheduling, timing and visuals. A horrific end to a gruesome war.

I watch as Peeta relives the moment again, this time through the eyes of a victor. “The parachutes,” he whispers. And at last, someone else knows the truth, though I think Haymitch may have guessed.

There is still a war criminal alive in Panem and he is a Gamemaker.


	14. Chapter 14

I wake on top of the quilt in the clothes I fell asleep in the night before. Peeta and I drifted off while we were talking and now we are knotted in a hopeless tangle of arms and legs. I take a few minutes to study his sleeping face, just inches from mine. The bruises under his eyes have started to fade. I brush the pad of my thumb along his cheekbone and press a kiss to his forehead. A slight smile plays across his lips and he burrows into his pillow. It’s sort of sweet and little boy-like and makes me want to stroke his hair. Hoping a little more rest will cause the bruises to fade completely, I manage to slip out of Peeta’s arms and get ready to face the day. I am at the top of the stairs when I hear banging in the kitchen. The unmistakable smell of bacon sizzling in a pan wafts up to the second floor. I frown, wondering whether Haymitch remembered to lock the door behind him when he stumbled out yesterday.

At the bottom of the stairs, our mentor is sawing logs on the couch. His flask is on the coffee table and his knife rests on his belly under his hand. I guess he didn’t go home after he dumped Peeta on the bed yesterday after all. I head into the kitchen and find Sae pouring hot water into the pot for tea. Lily is playing with her doll at the island.

“Morning, Girlie,” she tosses at me as she returns to the skillet. “Figured a hot breakfast might do the two of you some good this morning.”

It feels so good to know that she cares that I consider to sweeping her into a hug. Instead, I drop my hand on her shoulder when I pass by on my way to the breadbox. Sae reaches up and gives it a pat.

“You’re making enough for yourself I hope.” I start to slice the leftover bread for toast.

“Yep. Enough for me and Lily, and the drunk in there once he sleeps it off. Made some jam with the berries you left at my place the other day. It’s on the table, which you can set once you’ve got the toast started. Oh, and I picked up your mail.”

I am laying the forks on the kitchen table when Peeta appears in the doorway, yawning and scratching the top of his head sleepily. His clothes are rumpled from sleep and he has an endearing case of bedhead, but his eyes are clear. He manages a bashful smile. “How are my three favourite girls this morning?”

Sae bestows him with a toothless grin and then transfers the bacon to a plate before starting to scramble the eggs. “Up and about, I see.”

“The sun persists in rising, Sae.”

“So it does, Boy.”

Peeta’s arms find my waist and he buries his lips in my neck. “Morning. We have guests.”

Sae snorts. “Family ain’t guests, Boy. Go wake Haymitch.” I feel Peeta chuckle silently before he heads off to do Sae’s bidding. When he’s gone, she turns to look at me. “Make sure he calls that head doctor today,” she says. I nod in agreement. “And you talk to him too,” she adds, which earns her a huff from me.

Peeta wanders back in as I’m buttering toast. “Haymitch is still out of it, Sae. I think we’d better let him sleep.” I remember the knife under his hand and silently agree.

“Sit down then. Your breakfast is ready,” she says and slips a plate of eggs and a mug of tea in front of him as soon as he sits down. She pats his back. “You eat up, now. You’ll feel a lot better once you do.”

As soon as the next golden slices of toast pop out of the toaster, Lily, Sae and I join Peeta at the table. We’re discussing what to make for supper when Haymitch shuffles into the kitchen. He scratches his belly as he grabs a plate from the cupboard and scoops some eggs from the pan onto his plate.

He leans against the island while he shovels up the eggs. “How are you this morning, Boy?” he asks around a mouthful of eggs.

“Haymitch, Effie would be having fits about your manners right now,” I say.

He points at me with his fork. “What Effie doesn’t know won’t hurt her, Sweetheart. Well, Boy?”

“I feel OK, Haymitch, thanks.”

“Good. The head doctor is expecting a call from you today. You’re going to call him after breakfast, yeah?”

Peeta nods and pushes his breakfast around on his plate.

Haymitch scrapes the last of his eggs off his plate, shoving the last bits onto his fork with his thumb. When it’s gone, the plate clatters onto the countertop. He licks the last bit of eggs off his thumb before reaching out his hand to snatch bacon off the plate from the table. Faster than lightning, Sae raps his knuckles with the flat of her knife. Haymitch curses and nurses his knuckles while Peeta and I chortle. Lily watches solemnly.

“I’ve been fighting off hungry kids with bad manners for a lotta years, Haymitch. Now sit down,” she orders.

“I’ve gotta get outside and feed my birds, Old Woman. I don’t have time to sit down.”

“You’ll sit or you won’t eat.” Stubborn Seam eyes lock. Haymitch snarls and throws himself down in the chair. He snags a piece of bacon from the plate and chews angrily.

“If you hadn’t been born before the Dark Days, you’d be facing the pointy end of my knife for that stunt.”

Sae calmly sips her tea. “I watched your mother change your nappies, Haymitch. You didn’t impress me then either.”

Haymitch huffs and takes another piece of bacon. Peeta leans over and whispers in my ear, “Too bad Effie can’t say that.” I try not to vomit into my teacup. My stomach is just starting to settle when there’s a knock at the front door. Answering it is the perfect excuse to escape from the table and the disturbing visions that are flashing through my mind thanks to Peeta.

Thom is on the front porch and I step aside to let him in. “I just thought I’d check on you and see how you were faring this morning. Do you think Peeta is up to hearing what we found at the bakery?” he asks as he steps over the threshold.

“I think Peeta’s the best person to ask about that. We’re all in the kitchen. Have you eaten?” We make our way through the living room into the kitchen. Peeta greets Thom warmly while I fill a plate with eggs. When I turn around, I see that Peeta has cleared my place and Thom sits there. My plate has been moved on top of Peeta’s empty one. Once Thom digs into his breakfast, Peeta reaches out and pulls me onto his lap. His arm wraps around my waist. Thom’s lips quirk when he looks up from his plate and then he shakes his head.

“Seems like you’re pretty well back to normal.”

“Pretty much,” Peeta agrees.

“So do you want to know?”

Peeta’s arm tightens around me and he places a gentle kiss on the back of my neck. He nods and breathes in deeply. “Let’s have it.”

“They were all in there, Peeta.” The heat from Peeta’s slow exhale is warm against the nape of my neck. He lowers his brow to that same spot and squeezes me tightly.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. We sifted through it all,” Thom replies and then turns his eyes to me. “We took them up to the empty house like you and Haymitch said.”

I nod and thank Thom, knowing that yesterday’s work had to have been grisly. Peeta composes himself and tells Thom that he’ll bake bread and sweets for the work crews and bring them down for the crew sometime soon.

Thom shakes Peeta’s hand. “They’d appreciate that, I’m sure.”

Thom rises from the table, offers his thanks for breakfast and starts to shuffle for the kitchen door. Once his hand is on the doorknob he turns back to us. “You planning on having a memorial?”

“Yes,” I say, ignoring the way Peeta startles behind me.

Thom turns his hat in his hands. “Well, let me know when. I’ll see you around.”`

I’m up and clearing the table before the click of the door sounds behind Thom. Peeta crosses the floor to where I am dumping the breakfast dishes into the sink and filling it with warm water.

He leans against the counter, his arms crossed. “Katniss, I can’t have a memorial for my family when the rest of our district is buried in a mass grave.”

I scrub a plate furiously. “After everything you’ve been through, Peeta, no one here would begrudge you the chance to have some closure. Why do you think they spent all day yesterday at the bakery? They did that for you! That was a gesture of respect. You can’t just throw it back in their faces.”

Peeta shook his head. “No, it’s not right.”

The forks I am washing clatter when I toss them to the bottom of the sink. “If I had the opportunity to bring my sister home to 12 and offer her a decent burial… If I could actually have the chance to say good-bye, you’d better believe I would do it. And I wouldn’t be worrying about what people thought about it.”

Peeta grabs the forks out of the sink and starts drying them with the towel from the sideboard. His lips are tight. I hope he’s thinking it over. Instead, he looks at Haymitch. “Tell her Haymitch. Tell her it’s not right.”

Haymitch props a booted foot on the chair beside him. “I’m staying out of this one. My family’s been buried up on that hill for years.”

“Well, my family’s not, so I’ll have my say, Boy, and you’ll listen,” harrumphs Sae, who thumps the cast iron skillet on the counter beside me to be washed. “My boy and my daughter and their families were all in the street when the bombs landed. My grandbabies, all but Lily, are dead in that mass grave in the meadow.” Sae licks her lips and flicks her gaze out the window. “I don’t have to like it, but I have to accept it. But not everyone is going into the meadow. The folks who can be identified, if there’s someone left to claim them, are being buried out in the graveyard.” Her eyes revert Peeta. “And you’ll not disrespect your daddy by putting your family in that hole when you have a choice.”

Peeta lowers his head and nods and Sae pats him on the cheek before she begins to collect Lily for the return to their house. The kitchen is quiet for a few minutes, except for the clatter of dishes in the sink and Lily’s garbled responses to Sae’s murmured urgings that it is time to go home.

Sae and Lily are already crossing the green when Haymitch speaks up.

“So, Sweetheart. You want to bring your sister home?

I focus on the bubbles in the sink. “I saw that fire, Haymitch. Remember? There’s no way they could have identified her.”

Haymitch tells me every person in the Capitol bombing was buried and nearly everyone was identified using something called DNA or their dental records. I don’t really understand the science of it all, but I know that it means I might be able to return my sister’s remains to District 12 and I demand to know how it could be done.

“You just need to make a call to Plu-“

“No!” Peeta and I shout at once.

Haymitch looks at me shrewdly. “You told him.”

I shrug and return to washing the plates. “He wanted to know why I didn’t shoot Snow.”

Peeta crosses the floor and leans down on the table not far from Haymitch. “Something has to be done, Haymitch. The truth needs to come out.”

Haymitch pulls his flask out of his pocket and takes a swig. “I know Sweetheart is a pain, Boy, but are you trying to get rid of her already?” Peeta gives him a confused look. “She got to come home because Plutarch, Dr. Aurelius and I convinced everyone that she is hopelessly shell-shocked.”

“My bracelet said I was mentally disoriented,” I pipe up helpfully from the sink.

Haymitch tells me to shut up. “Trust me, Sweetheart, I know what a hopeless lunatic you are.” Haymitch sucks on his teeth and then takes a long drink from his flask. When he lowers it to the table, he leans toward Peeta. “If that wasn’t the case, if there is any chance she understood what she was doing, then she’s a traitor who assassinated the President. And Sweetheart over there will face a firing squad faster than you can say Coriolanus Snow.”

Peeta drops into the chair across from Haymitch and shoves his fingers into his hair. “There’s got to be another option. One that exonerates Katniss and forces the truth to come out. It’s not right.”

Haymitch tucks his flask in his pocket and considers Peeta carefully. “From where I sit, you’re both alive and as safe as I can make you. I’m done playing the Hunger Games. I suggest you bury your families and try to live in peace.”

I pull the plug on the sink and wipe my hands on a cloth as I cross the room to Peeta and Haymitch. Stopping behind Peeta, I drop my hand Peeta’s shoulder, he reaches back to cover it with his own. My eyes lock with our mentors’ and he rises from his post to pick up the phone. Returning to his seat he starts dialing a series of numbers that I guess will put him through to Plutarch’s office. The phone is picked up quickly on the other end.

“Good morning, Princess.” Peeta’s head shoots up out of his remaining hand. Effie Trinket is working for Plutarch? “Is he in?” Haymitch looks over and gives us a half smile. “Yes, they’re right here. They look good. I’ll tell ‘em. They miss you too. He’s free now? Thanks, Princess. I’ll call you later.”

I can tell when Plutarch comes onto the line because Haymitch’s demeanor changes completely. He leans back in the chair, his speech slows and he develops a slur that wasn’t there seconds before. They make small talk about the Capitol and then Haymitch tells him that I have a request and passes the handset over to me.

“Ah, Katniss! It is a pleasure. To what do I owe the honour of this call? Changed your mind about my singing program, I hope?”

“No, Plutarch, but thank you,” I reply.

He chuckles. “Well, I’m not going to give up on that one. What can I do for you today?”

I tell him that I’d like to repatriate my sister’s remains to District 12.

There’s a brief pause on the line. “Your sister died? You mean the little nurse who was working with Peeta? When did this happen?”

During the Victory Tour, I always struggled to keep the look on my face was as sincere as the words flowing from my lips. The good thing about the telephone is that I only have to keep my voice under control. I manage to grind it out. “She was among the District 13 medics who died in front of the Presidential Palace when we took the Capitol.”

Plutarch sounds genuinely shocked. “Oh how tragic. She was so young.” He mouths a series of similar platitudes that I ignore. “But as for exhuming her remains my dear Katniss, I’m afraid that’s quite impossible. Didn’t anyone tell you? I suppose not. It was all cleaned up by the time you got out of the hospital. Between the explosions and the fire, there was almost nothing to find. If there was anything left to your sister my dear, I’m certain she would have been unidentifiable.”

I should have known better than to get my hopes up. I clench Peeta’s shoulder and he presses his cheek against my arm. Haymitch gives me a curious look and I shake my head slightly. His jaw twitches and he gives me a signal to wrap it up. I manage to thank Plutarch for his time and accept his condolences before hanging up.

Peeta catches me when my legs give out and pulls me onto his lap. I sob into his shoulder. Just one small thing. That’s all I wanted from the people of Panem, the chance to be able to mourn my sister properly. To bury her next to our father where she belongs. I hadn’t even had time to realize how important this was to me before she was taken from me again.

Prim. Her name ricochets around in my head, but each echo is louder than then one before it.

Peeta’s hand strokes up and down my back, trying to comfort me, but a dam I’d just begun to shore up has broken inside me again and all I can think of is Prim. My Little Duck who grew too wise, too early. I remember her by my bedside, trying to care for me, save me. Somewhere along the line, while I was fighting for my life, for Peeta’s life, struggling to protect my family; Prim grew up and started protecting me. She was healer, not a killer like me. But she was fierce. She was smart and brave. She saved Peeta when I could not, because she knew I loved him before I did.

The sobs have just started to recede when I hear the kitchen door slam. I assume Haymitch has gone home to his bottle. Peeta scoops me up, takes me into the living room and covers me with a blanket. He whispers something about making a fresh pot of tea and kisses my forehead. I close my eyes and try to will the Earth to stop turning. The familiar sounds of Peeta pottering about in the kitchen are soothing.

The kettle whistles, the kitchen door slams again and I hear the rumble of Haymitch’s voice and the strain in Peeta’s when he replies.

“I’m not sure she’ll be able to do that right now,” Peeta says as they get closer to the living room. “Or even if it’s fair to ask her.”

“She won’t have to talk to him,” says Haymitch walking through the door. “I’ll handle that.” He reaches down and slaps my feet from the couch onto the floor, ordering me to sit up. “We’re gonna take your request to the top, Sweetheart. The least you can do is try to be conscious for it.” I scramble up against the cushions and see that he’s got the phone in his hand again. He flops down beside me, pulls a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and starts to dial. Whoever is on the other end doesn’t pick up immediately. Haymitch looks at me and rolls his eyes. Eventually, a man answers.

“It’s Haymitch,” he says. Apparently ‘hello’ is a waste of his time. “I need to talk to _her_.” Our mentor rolls his eyes. “Don’t give me that shit about protocol. Especially when I know you’re probably standing right beside her.” Haymitch pauses and I hear what sounds like more blustering from the person on the other end. “Hawthorne,” he snaps into the phone and my eyes flick to Peeta, who is frozen in the doorway, my cup of tea in his hand.

“The Mockingjay would appreciate a few minutes of the President’s time. Now ask her nicely please.”

When I reach out my hand to Peeta, his shoulders square and he crosses swiftly to me, perching on the arm of the couch and wrapping an arm around me. He passes me my mug and I lay my head against his side.

There’s a pause again and Haymitch glances over at us. Even on my best days, I am not yet ready to talk to Gale and today is most definitely not a good day. My eyes lock with his. He nods in understanding and holds up one finger. He frowns into the phone.

“Yes, I’m still here. No, Hawthorne I’m not putting Sweetheart on the line until I hear the President’s voice. This is not a social call,” he snaps. “It’s about her sister.” There’s silence on the other end of the phone and before long, I hear a woman’s voice on the line. “Good morning Madame President,” Haymitch says smoothly, his voice transforming into what I’m sure was the tone he used to persuade sponsors to part with their money while we were in the arena. “With your permission, I’d like to put you on speakerphone with Katniss Everdeen.”

Haymitch presses a button on the phone that I’ve never used before and then says “Go ahead, Madame President.”

“Good morning Miss Everdeen.” Pashmina Paylor’s voice fills the room.

Haymitch looks at me and nods at the phone.

“Good morning, President Paylor,” I manage to choke out.

“Peeta Mellark is here as well,” Haymitch adds, and Peeta warmly greets the leader of our newly free nation, making small talk and giving me a moment to collect myself.

“As happy as I am to hear from you both, I only have a few minutes, Miss Everdeen. Commander Hawthorne said you had something to ask me?”

Peeta squeezes my shoulder encouragingly.

“I wanted to ask about Prim, my sister,” I stammer. “Her remains, I mean.” I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I’d like to be able to bury her here, in District 12, with our father. She died in the bombing in front of the Presidential Palace. She was one of the medics from District 13.”

There is a brief pause on the other end of the line. “I see,” says Paylor. “I confess I’m surprised you’ve come to me with this request, Miss Everdeen. I’m sure Plutarch could have smoothed the necessary paths for you.”

I am about to tell her that Plutarch said it was impossible, but Haymitch interrupts. “Plutarch didn’t seem to know where to start with this one, Madame President.”

There is another pause on the other end of the line. “Give me a few hours, Ms. Everdeen. I’ll have to make some calls. I can reach you at this number?”

As I confirm that it’s our home number, I wonder if Paylor has me on speakerphone as well. If so, Gale heard me say that Peeta and I are living together. Maybe I’m being immature, but the idea that he could have heard the news from me without ever having to see the look of resignation and disappointment on his face fills me with a certain amount of relief.

By the time I hang up the phone, I’m totally drained. Haymitch must be too, because he pats my knee and says he’ll see us later before shuffling out the door. Peeta kisses the top of my head and shuts himself into his studio, hoping to paint away the last shadows that still lay over him after yesterday’s episode and the drama this morning. I decide the best place for me is the woods and rise from the couch to retrieve my bow from the closet.

The air outside is filled with the sweet smells of the last days of summer. I wander through the trees on silent feet and manage to shoot a rabbit and a couple of squirrels. High in the canopy above me, the mockingjays are singing in the trees and a sense of peace settles over me, as though my father is sitting beside me, encouraging me to teach them a new tune to share on the breeze.

Before I realize it, my mouth opens and the words to a song he used to sing to my mother when they thought I was asleep begins to slip from my lips.

 

_Wise men say_

_Only fools rush in_

_But I can’t help_

_Falling in love with you._

_Shall I stay_

_Would it be a sin?_

_If I can’t help falling in love with you._

I smile as the birds add their voices to the simple tune and raise it towards the heavens. It fills the air while I wait and watch, and when they begin add harmony to the original melody, I do as my father taught me and give them another verse.

 

_Like a river flows_

_Surely to the sea_

_Darling so it goes_

_Some things are meant to be_

_Take my hand_

_Take my whole life too_

_For I can’t help_

_Falling in love with you._

The bird song follows me all the way home and the tune still on my lips when I enter the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This new chapter is posted with many thanks to Peetabreadgirl who's been encouraging me to get it posted and gave me some good suggestions. The song was originally performed by Elvis Presley, of course. :)


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